Firefighter Safety

My hearing loss is for certain sounds in the high frequency range of speech; for me those sounds are predominantly th, s, f, and ch. Who knew that the sounds for different letters and letter combinations come out of our mouths at different frequencies? Did you?

The firefighter diagnosed with colon cancer today may have first been exposed 15 to 20 years ago (1998 to 2003). What did we know then? How well were we protecting ourselves then? These are questions that should be scaring the hell out of firefighters. They do me because my career spanned the years 1982 to 2007!

Until I went the following year to a specialist who understood autoimmune issues and said that the previous tests were incomplete as most docs do not understand how to test for the full thyroid spectrum.  My former male fire officer [with Aurora Fire Department] also has Hashimoto's (though it’s much more common in women) and I know women firefighters that have had thyroid cancer as well as Sjogren's syndrome—a really terrible autoimmune disease, worse than Hashimoto's.

This is not some “pipe dream” of mine. There is such a system and it’s been available for the better part of the last five years. It’s the Fire-ED Interactive System developed by my colleague Tracy Last. And if you don’t know Tracy and the Fire-ED Interactive System, then you don’t know fire and life safety education for the 21st century.

It’s on you as the individual firefighter or officer to document your exposures—every single one—that you can document from the past and from here on out in your career. It can be years before you develop cancer, more than likely after you’ve completed your career in the fire service.

Chief Avsec writes of the need for a "third corner" in the company officer's hat of responsibilities: risk manager. “If we are to continue making positive strides towards making the job of a firefighter safer, we must develop company officers who can recognize and manage risk in both the emergency and non-emergency arenas.”

The Fire Service Safety Stand Down (June 17-23) is an opportunity for firefighters everywhere to become informed and educated about health and wellness and The Emergency Services Road Map to Health and Wellness published by the Firefighter Safety Through Advanced Research (FSTAR) program.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Did you know? Half of residential fire deaths result from fires reported between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., yet only one in five residential fires (20%) were reported during these hours [1]. Those hours are also when many firefighters may not be on their “A-Game.” Why not? Because of sleep deprivation. Or because they’ve ...

One of the experts I spoke with says the future of PPE development will be driven by how the fire service perceives its mission. As we decide which tasks we’ll do and not do and how we’ll get those tasks done will be key to the type of PPE manufactures bring to market.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer CO poisoning is a significant health risk for firefighters who are exposed to smoke during fire suppression operations. Fire departments must increase their efforts to identify the early on-set of CO poisoning through aggressive assessment of all firefighters post exposure. And that needs to happen in firefighter rehab. In 2015, the National Fire Protection ...