Firefighter smoke inhalation treatment starts with recognizing that someone needs care, even when that firefighter finishes the call and says nothing. You are riding back after a fire when you realize your head is thumping. Maybe your stomach feels off, or you feel a little lightheaded. You don’t mention it to anybody. You tell yourself […]
Read MoreThe fire service did not solve the Toxic Twins problem. We stopped talking about it as its own problem. In 2009, the Fire Smoke Coalition introduced firefighters to carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide through the Department of Homeland Security-supported program To Hell and Back: Cyanide Poisoning. The program called them the Toxic Twins. From 2010 […]
Read MoreROAM meets Know the Distance. Know your air, plan the trip out, and train like it matters. We’d rather stretch a line, force a door, or make a search than sit through another air-management talk. Checking gauges and discussing when to leave isn’t the exciting part of the job. But getting back out is part […]
Read MoreFirefighter breathing air codes are evolving, and this discussion continues the question raised yesterday: If an air standpipe is part of the answer, what standards, safeguards, and continuing oversight are needed to ensure firefighters can depend on it? Water has a standpipe. Why not air? That question opened the This or That? discussion. It also […]
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