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Wildfire Today

Tag: firefighter health

Firefighters: four recommendations for eating, drinking, and working out

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 3 Comments on Firefighters: four recommendations for eating, drinking, and working out

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Dr. Brent Ruby is a professor at the University of Montana who studies extreme physiology, including how wildland firefighting impacts the body. In 2011 we wrote an article titled The myth of drinking water which included the results of some of Dr. Ruby’s research, as well as his thoughts about the firefighter hyperthemia fatality on the CR 337 fire in Texas.

Men’s Journal has an interesting article featuring Dr. Ruby and some of his recommendations for firefighters. Below is an excerpt:

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“Workouts should mirror job demands.

Rather than banging out a 10k in featherweight running sneakers every morning, crewmembers should go for long hikes on steep trails wearing a heavy backpack and clunky boots. “Hiking with a heavy load – that’s job-specific aerobic training.”

Eat constantly.

Ruby has found that to be safely working at peak condition, they should consume 4,500 calories a day with a number of “eating episodes.” If what’s supposed to be an eight-hour shift turns into a 12-hour shift, Hotshots should have easy access to quality calories. “They need an elaborate food plan that accommodates unpredictable shifts. We envision giving them ownership of the menu, where they can mix and match 12 items,” he says.

Aim for variety in calories.

Ruby suggests packing a high-quality red meat for protein; several types of fresh fruit; carbs in the form of oats and rice; carrots and broccoli for diversity; and loads of dried fruits and nuts. “They need foods that satisfies and doesn’t leave them focusing on how hungry they still are,” Ruby says. “Their job is fire suppression. As soon as they’re distracted from fire suppression, other risks crop up.”

Drink water – and lots of it.

The best way to think about hydration, according to Ruby, is in terms of “water turnover” over a 24 hour period, or how much water you take in and dump out through sweat and urine. On average, the water turnover for Hotshots is 7 to 9.5 liters a day. “You have to make sure you’re taking in somewhere in that range – probably a liter more than you’re putting out,” he says. Being sufficiently hydrated alone, however, isn’t going to stop you from overheating in a high-stress situation, warns Ruby.”

Throwback Thursday

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , ,

Six years ago this week, these are some of the topics we wrote about on Wildfire Today in 2008:

—Ice Storms in Missouri increased the fuel available for wildfires by a factor of 10.

—A man in Texas was arrested after he allegedly attempted to run over with an ATV volunteer firefighters who were battling a grass fire on his property.

—CAL FIRE was being taken to court, according to a suit, for partially demobing the Piru fire before it was 100% contained. The fire grew from 1,200 to 64,000 acres. Apparently the strategy and tactics that were used on the fire are being questioned in a court of law 4 years after the fact.

—Fire Captain Matt Moore with the Murrieta (California) Fire Department died, succumbing to complications from meningitis, fire department officials said. He had been in various hospitals since November battling an aggressive form of meningitis. It is believed Moore inhaled a parasite while fighting the region’s wildfires late last year. The parasite reportedly caused swelling in his brain.

Captain Matt Moore
Captain Matt Moore. Photo courtesy of the Murrieta Firefighters Association.

A cop looks at hotshot fitness

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 4 Comments on A cop looks at hotshot fitness

A law enforcement officer wrote an article about the fitness standards and programs for interagency hotshot crews. Jim Vaglica is a full-time police sergeant on call 24/7 with a regional SWAT team in the Boston area. He is a strength and conditioning specialist, a police sergeant, and is a cast member of Mark Burnett’s “Expedition Impossible”. The article was published by Bodybuilding.com.

In describing hotshots, he said, “If I had to relate it to my own professional background, I’d say it’s the difference between a squad of police officers and a SWAT team.”

Below are more excerpts from the article:

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“THIS IS UNIQUE WORK. WHAT SORT OF STRENGTH DOES IT DEMAND?

Unlike fighting structure fires, where brute strength is paramount, the physical demands of wildland firefighting are vastly different. You’re not going to be carrying a 200-pound man down a flight of stairs and out of a burning building. No one on the crew gives a crap “How much ya bench?” All they care about is that you can swing a tool all day without bitching and moaning, and then get up the next day and do it again. If you look at most hotshot crews, you’ll see a lot of slender builds. Excessive muscle mass doesn’t get you anywhere. It just slows you down.

WHAT IS THE TOUGHEST PART OF THE JOB?

When you’re actually fighting a fire, the almost unbearable conditions seem to have no end. After a few hours of working in 110-degree heat with no shade, you may start to think that there’s no way you can finish the day, but you know that everyone else on your crew is suffering too. You just push through it for the guys on either side of you. If you go down, they’ll have to pick up your slack. When you’re in the middle of nowhere punching in line, you can’t just jump in your car and go home. You take another big swig of hot water, you deal with it, and you keep going.”

Wildfire news, October 6, 2012

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , ,

Idaho Governor has recommendations on how to reduce damage from wildfires

The Governor of Idaho, C.L. “Butch” Otter, in an opinion article published under his name, has some recommendations about how to reduce the adverse impacts from wildfires. They include more roads, grazing, and logging.

Smoke from Idaho’s Mustang Fire had elevated levels of radiation

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality tested the air quality near the Mustang Fire and said that even though they found “definitely elevated” levels of radiation, it did not pose a risk to human health. The air samples were obtained in the nearby town of North Fork. As Wildfire Today told you on September 21, the fire burned through four former mining sites that had traces of radioactive uranium and thorium.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

…Paul Ritter, health physicist with the state environmental agency, said in the area of the mining sites, smoke from the fire showed amounts of radiation roughly equivalent to emissions from a fire in 2000 that charred parts of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons design facility in New Mexico.

“The readings are definitely elevated but not out of line with what has been measured in fires before. It is not a risk,” he said.

Americans are exposed to an estimated 310 millirems of radiation a year from natural sources, including some rocks and soils, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

An analysis of air samples in North Fork showed residents would have been exposed to 0.5 millirems of radiation in a 30-day period. That compares to a dose of 5 millirems delivered by a round-trip transcontinental flight, Ritter said.

Utah students influence legislation about wildfires

Some high school students in Utah who were interested in the effects of climate change talked to state Representative Kraig Powell, who, according to a report in Power Engineering:

…has opened a bill file for legislation that would examine how climate change is expected to drive more and bigger wildfires and to begin planning for future wildfire fighting and suppression costs.

In early meetings with Powell, [the students] shared some of what they had learned about wildfire in Utah. For instance, they told how the state already has seen 400,000 acres burned this year with suppression costs of $47.1 million — part of a trend prompted by record hot and dry periods.

They also told how rehabilitating burned areas often costs more than fighting the wildfire itself. Their example? The 2007 Milford Flat fire which racked up a $5 million bill for suppression, while rehabilitating the scarred forest and range cost $17 million.

That’s what led to the concept for the bill, which is currently being drafted by the Legislature’s lawyers.

“I’ve been learning a lot,” Powell said. “It’s not a simple science.”

Meth production may have caused brush fire

Michigan State Police are investigating a small wildfire that may have originated from an attempt to cook meth in Marquette Township.

Researchers quantify effects of wildfire smoke on residents

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Researchers in British Columbia took advantage of smoky conditions from wildfires near Kelowna (map) and other areas in southeastern B.C. in 2003 to study the effects of smoke on the residents. The fires that year burned over 67,000 acres, destroyed 238 homes, and forced 33,000 people to evacuate.

The study not only evaluated the particulate data from air quality monitoring stations, but also the human health impacts, especially in urban settings.

Smoke effects, British Columbia 2003
Difference in weekly asthma visits for 2003 versus the average of 2002 and 2004 (when there were few fires in the study area) plotted against the difference in average weekly total PM10 measurements for Kelowna, the largest city in the study area. Bars indicate the weekly sum of 2003 asthma-specific visits minus the averages of the 2002 and 2004 weekly sums of asthma visits. The black line indicates the average weekly TEOM-measured PM10 in 2003 minus the average of weekly measurements in 2002 and 2004. (From the referenced study.)

The researchers found that increases in smoke particulates, PM10, were associated with increased odds of respiratory physician visits and hospital admissions, but not with cardiovascular health outcomes. Residents in Kelowna experienced an increase of 100 micrograms of particulate per cubic meter of air, which resulted in an 80 percent increase in respiratory hospital admissions and a six percent increase in the odds of an asthma-specific physician visit.

Thankfully, the University of British Columbia authors, Sarah B. Henderson, Michael Brauer1, Ying C. MacNab, and Susan M. Kennedy, made the entire paper freely available to the public, honoring the principles of Open Access.