A Lessons Learned Review (LLR) for an unusual but severe injury has been released. A firefighter working for the National Park Service at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California developed rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo) during his first week of work this season, probably after his first day which included very strenuous physical training. Then four days later, on June 27, 2013, he suffered from heat stroke during a training run. Recent research indicates that muscle damaging exercises can increase heat strain during subsequent exercise.

The firefighter was treated by NPS medics at the scene and then transported by a California Highway Patrol helicopter with a paramedic on board. He arrived at a Level I trauma center within one hour and thirty three minutes of his collapse while running. The doctor at the hospital told his parents that he was “…a profoundly sick young man, who may not make it.” He was hospitalized for two weeks and underwent kidney dialysis three times a week for seven weeks; reduced to once a week at the time the report was written, and was projected to make a full recovery. He hopes to return to light duty work, but cannot do so until he is finished with kidney dialysis treatments.

An excerpt from the report:

The LLR Team would like to commend the EMS responders, both from the NPS and the CHP, for their quick- thinking and actions. The LLR Team is certain that if these employees had not done so, [the firefighter’s] injury would have proved fatal.

The report, written by a four-person team that included an Exercise Physiologist with a PH.D., is very well written. It includes numerous recommendations for sustaining good practices as well as suggestions for improving the handling of rhambdo and other serious injuries, both locally and nationally.

All firefighters should read this Lessons Learned Review.

More information and heat illness and its prevention.

Other articles at Wildfire Today about rhabdomyolysis.