8/16/2023 0 Comments Phoenix fire dispatchIn another, a recently evicted man with sores over his arms and legs was responsive but confused. In one call the Guardian attended, a security guard at a Circle K convenience store found an unresponsive man who had been smoking fentanyl. In Phoenix, the trifecta of extreme heat, homelessness and substance misuse have contributed to hundreds of preventable deaths in recent years. “If the body is sandwiched between the ground at 150F and direct sunlight, it won’t end well,” said Johnsson. On a hot day, any call can turn into a heat emergency.Ī person injured in a traffic accident or a homeless person without shade or adequate clothing can end up with severe burns if their skin is in contact with a hot surface like a road or bench. He is relatively new to the service and remembers all the heat calls.įirefighters/paramedics from fire house 18 in Phoenix attend to a woman who was locked out of a home while a pan was on the stove. Last year’s record for Johnsson was a young homeless woman in her 20s, whose core temperature was 114F. “You could feel the heat coming off his body … we do everything we can but it’s very hard to come back from that temperature,” said Brennan Johnsson, 27, who is assigned to an ambulance. A catheter was inserted to remove any hot urine before transferring him to the ICU. In the ER, he was put inside a body bag filled with ice, what’s known as a hot pocket, in a last-ditch attempt to cool him down. He had no gag reflex when the crew tested it, and burn blisters on his arms and neck. The crew ripped off his clothes, placed cold towels and ice packs under his armpits, groin, and neck, and administered cold IV fluids through a hole drilled into his shin. His core temperature at the hospital was 112F – the hottest so far this year. In one case a passerby called 911 after spotting a man face down, unconscious behind a wall. All were unconscious and needed intubation (help breathing). The station mascot is a bedbug, an ode to the frequent encounters with the tiny blood suckers.įire PPE hanging at the fire house 18, Phoenix’s busiest station.īy the end of July the B shift, which the Guardian followed, had at least five patients – two women, three men – with core temperatures over 108F – which is when their thermometer maxes out and simply reads “high”. Three teams – the A, B and C shift – work 24 hours on, 48 hours off, although many do overtime as citywide, the service is short-staffed. Each vehicle has an ice chest with cooling towels, bottled water and saline packs for heat calls. Station 18 is the busiest in Arizona, with two trucks and two ambulances covering a densely populated section of the city with few trees but plenty of strip malls, low-income apartment blocks and a growing homeless population. The Guardian recently shadowed a crew at fire station 18 in central Phoenix on three separate days in order to better understand the impact of extreme heat on first responders. Two charts showing the average temperature, call centers open, and heat-related 911 calls during two weeks in Phoenix.īut the scale of the health burden – the impact of heat-associated deaths, injuries and illness on individuals and services – is not fully known due to variations in the way incidents are investigated and recorded at the local level.
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