Fire Service 'Did You Know?' #1

Did you know that in the United States every year approximately 105 firefighters die in the line of duty? That's 105 men and women who leave their loved ones to defend everyone else's loved ones, and never return again.

Most of the country is unaware of this. In three years about the same number of firefighters die as the number of FDNY firefighters killed on 9/11. That's insane.

What do you think the number one killer of fighters is?
A) Asphyxiation from smoke inhalation
B) Heart attacks and strokes
C) Falls from ladders
D) Motor vehicle accidents (volunteers enroute to station, trucks en route to scenes)

The answer, and this may surprise some people, if not all, is B, heart attacks and strokes. Firefighters are considered to be some of the strongest, most fit individuals in our work force, but this is simply not true. While there's plenty of tall or medium sized, lanky guys, there's a large number of just plain-old large guys. This is mostly because full time firefighters spend an awful lot of time eating and watching television, and volunteer firefighters can have any number of excuses available to civilians.

To put the above multiple choice question in order, it would look like this:
1. Heart attacks and strokes
2. Motor vehicle accidents
3. Asphyxiation from smoke inhalation
* Falls from ladders is statistically insignificant

The most baffling thing about this trend is that as firefighters, we run into burning buildings and other such environments that the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health consider to be immediately dangerous to health and life (IDHL). Despite the very danger of our chosen profession, it's not fire or smoke that is killing us, it's adrenaline.

Did you know that adrenaline, if unused completely by the system after it's released, will assist in building up arterial blockages, and puts gas pedals to the floor? The evolutionary function of adrenaline is to get the system to take it's stores of energy, such as fat, and release it into the blood stream for immediate and emergency use. Well, if you don't use all of that gunk up - let's say you go through twenty years of calls where 90% prove to be false alarms, then that's twenty years of 90% of the time having all that fat released into your system but unused.

Adrenaline also keeps us from scenes. About every week at least on fire trucks slams into a pedestrian vehicle because the driver failed to check both ways before proceeding through an intersection. As you can imagine, this does not bode well for the pedestrians involved. An engine truck carries, typically, about 1000 gallons of water. At 8.5 pounds per gallons, that's 8500 pounds of inertial weight alone in just water that does not want to stop as quickly as you want it to. Additionally, volunteers have a nasty habit of speeding way too quickly to scenes, and also failing to yield in intersections.

Adrenaline also makes us forget simple things like putting on seatbelts. The most dangerous fire truck on the road is a tanker, with up to 3000 gallons of water. It doesn't take much to roll a tanker truck (it sometimes takes nothing). Not generally a problem...unless of course you fail to wear a seat belt, are ejected, and the truck then rolls over you. At number 2 on the list of causes of deaths, that's a lot of roll overs.

Smarten up guys, slow down, look both ways, and hit the gym. You owe it yourselves, your families, and the people you protect.