SOP/SOG can stand for a variety of things these days...
Standard Operating Procedures
Suggested Operating Procedures
Standard Orerations Protocol
Standard Operating Guidelines
Suggested Operating Guidelines
Etc. etc... Once the lawyers get involved, they try to think of ways to avoid making them "mandatory"...Duh.
Your story reminds me of the first SCBA's I used on my VFD. Steel cylinders, thickwall frame, canvas & leather straps. Weighed about 35 lbs.
New ones weigh something like 18 or 20 lbs tops.
The commo we have betwwen the Pump Operator ("Engineer" here) and the Branch Man ("Nozzle" "tip" or "pipe" man) is just a hand held FM radio in either the VHF (140-160Mhz) or UHF (400-460Mhz) range. Some Depts. use 800Mhz repeaters and some still use low band (38-52Mhz), but most paid shops have hand helds for each team. Some rural shops without the $$ still have limited radios & such.
