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.