Battling A Fire In The Sweltering Heat Can Create Challenges For Firefighters

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- The Columbus Fire and Rescue team spent much of Wednesday afternoon in the sweltering heat putting out an apartment fire on 16th Avenue South.

“These guys exercise, they prepare for this, but you know, they’re worn down today on a day like today,” said Anthony Colom, Columbus Fire and Rescue Spokesman.

Colom has been with the department for more than two decades and said battling a fire is always difficult, but battling the blaze in the scorching heat brings added dangers.

“There’s nothing you can do when you get hot, you can’t take your stuff off in a fire,” he said.

Firefighters wear heavy equipment as they enter into a burning building, and that extra weight means extra heat.

“With the temperature being the way it is in the 90’s, with the heat index it’s probably closer to 100, they’ve got on all of these turnouts,” Colom described. “They got on an air pack, and they got their helmet on underneath that, so with all of that on them it’s maybe an extra 70 pounds.”

The Columbus Fire and Rescue team is one of the few departments in the state that practices burning homes in these types of conditions for training.

However, battling against mother nature can also be as difficult as the blaze their fighting, so the department takes extra precautions once on scene.

“We rotate out, we’ve got a rapid intervention team (RIT) outside and their job is to watch the guys inside,” Colom explained. “We call in extra trucks and like I say, they will rotate out. With today being the type of day that it is, even our fire chief Martin Andrews did turnouts and he went in and fought the fire in an attempt to preserve the strength of his firefighters.”

Once the fire is put out and the job is done, Colom said they then take the firefighters back to the fire station to begin the recovery process.

“We try to get them back to the station, they’ll wipe off with baby wipes,” said Colom. “If they’re covered with any kind of material from inside the house, we’ll spray them down before they get back in the truck. We’ll get back and take the turnouts off, and ask them to take a hot shower to open up their pores and get some of that stuff off of them.”

Being exposed to extreme heat also exposes firefighters to health risks, such as heart attacks and blood clotting, which is why Colom said the recovery and cool down process is crucial.

“You can cool down too quickly sometimes, depends on that person, the long time fireman said. “Some people have a medical history where these type things happen. What we do here with our firefighters is we’ll let them sit inside the truck, we’ll keep the trucks running, we got air conditioning on, and that’s part of what we do as rehab.”

While on scene, Colom said paramedics from Baptist will be on hand to watch and assist firefighters if their services are needed.