Dehydration and Life Flight

It was hot week of firefighting. The fire was mostly out. But there was still work to do. However mistakes were made and it became serious very fast.

The fire we were on was the Kitten Complex. There was several fires in the complex. All week they were telling us to keep hydrated. This is normal.

What wasn't  normal was how many people were dropping like fly's. Now the protocol is that when there is an emergency we follow a pre-planned medical plan. It is called the nine line. It is a step by step plan of what to do in the event of an emergency.

Multiple times we heard this over the radio. It was dehydration. Some were serious enough to need to be life flighted out. We never heard what the end result was.

We all have a medic placed in strategic places for quick response in the event of an emergency.

On this day it hit close to home. It was not just our fire but it was our division of the fire. There were several of us engine crews that were close by. We all jumped in and played a role in getting this young man some help. We walked in the medic and some water.

I took a couple of pictures of us helping the medic:

We were all taking turns fanning the young man with his fire shirt. He was getting a I V as well as some cold packs to try to lower his temp.

He ate some pudding and was able to sip some water. After an hour or so he was recovering well. So well in fact he was able to walk himself back to the engine. They sent him to the hospital for observation and he was fine. He spent the night there and was released.

What went wrong? Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented? I will explain the fallout from what happened. As I said before mistakes were made. This shouldn't have happened.

How is your common sense? Tell me what could have prevented this from happening.

I will tell you what happened in my next post.

Whites Metal Detrectors

I just wanted to remind everyone that I am not just a blogger but  also am the LaGrande  dealer for Whites Metal Detectors.

I have been a bit distracted the last year or so, as a lot has happened. Soon I will explain why. At this time though I will say the last year has been hell to say the least.

That being said I am here to help you with any of your metal detector needs. I have a bunch of new catalogs. So let me know what you need and I will do my best to help you. I take Visa Mastercard Discover and american express.

If you are new to the sport, well you can find lots of cool things out there.

Old coins

These are the kind of things you can find out there. It takes a little research and you can find all kinds of treasures.

Happy hunting!

Check back soon I will explain what went wrong on the fire that resulted in people getting over heated. You wont want to miss it.....

Stemler Overheated

It was a hot hot few days on this fire. But there was still some clean up to do.

It was hot and we have had a few days of extreme heat. the humidity was low. The complex of fires all had to deal with it. We had heard over the radio about people being lifted out for extreme dehydration. Some where in a critical state. In fact there was six people evacuated off of the complex.

Then we had a dehydration on our own section of the fire. Below are the pictures of all of us trying to cool the patient. 

We had a medic on site and we hiked him in and he administered an i v. We were able to cool him off and fortunately he was able to walk back to the truck under his own power. 

We were fortunate on this one. It could have been any one of us. 

Credit should go out to a number of people. There was many of us who played a role in caring for this patient. 

We are all taught what to do and what not to do. But the common denominator of disasters seems to be set up by mistakes that happen because of a number of reasons. 

My next post I will talk about the reasons that led to the dehydration on our division of the fire. There were mistakes that were made that could have, and should have been prevented.

Stemler Fire

After we got the repairs done to the truck we were back on the road again. Heading back to Jintura. This was a rugged fire. It took almost 2 hours to get to the fire. But it was less then ten miles to get there. Tires that hit the desert don't fare to well. We were fortunate. But lots of guys had to replace tires. In one case an engine had to replace all six tires. It cost him over $2000.00 bucks. Ouch!

On the move

We had to hike in a mile or so to work the fire. It was really hot. Lot's of things went....well you will see in a future post.lets just say things overheated. And that isn't just the weather.