Firefighters get weaker and slower over time, study finds – putting their lives and others’ at risk 

Mental and physical fatigue could play a major role in accidents and deaths among firefighters, a new study has found.

Researchers say that, using a fitness tracker, they found that firefighters lose muscle mass, take longer to recover and show a decline in reaction times as the fire season progresses. 

Wildland firefighting has become more difficult in recent years due to the season growing in intensity and duration, lasting 30 days longer than it did three decades ago. 

The team, from the University of Idaho, says it hopes its findings lead to firehouses shifting the goal from not just protecting the firefighters from the fire itself but also protecting their physical and mental health over long periods of time.

Mental and physical fatigue could play a major role in accidents and deaths among firefighters, a new study has found. Pictured: Firefighters keep watch over the Holy Fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest in Lake Elsinore, California, on August 9 

Lead author Randy Brooks, a professor in the department of Forestry, Rangeland and Fire Sciences, said he felt motivated to begin investigating after three firefighters died while working to put out a blaze in Twisp, Washington in 2015.

Both of Brooks’s sons are firefighters and one of them, Bo, worked on the Twisp fire.

‘My son called me at four in the afternoon,’ Brooks said in a press release. ‘I knew something was wrong because they usually just text me to let me know they were all right.’

Bo told his father that high winds had swept into the area and that the crew was forced to retreat. Aside from the three firefighters that died, one was left badly burned. 

‘He said: “Dad you’re a forestry researcher – is there anything you can do to help us?”‘ Brooks recalled his son telling him.

Brooks teamed up with Callie Collins, a doctoral student in environmental science, and surveyed more than 400 wildland firefighters. 

The majority of them identified mental and physical fatigue as the primary cause of injuries to firefighters who are often confronted with a changing, dangerous environment. 

FIREFIGHTERS BATTLE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AFTER THE BLAZE  

Firefighters often battle suicidal thoughts after tackling a blaze, researchers say.

Battling the forest fires that have ravaged the western US often means exhausting and interminable days, while the death and destruction weigh heavily on the minds of those tasked with stemming the flames.

According to the US Fire Administration, 65 firefighter fatalities have been reported in 2018.

That figure does not include the 45 who killed themselves in 2018, according to Jeff Dill, whose Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance (FHBA) group helps those battling depression or  PTSD.

‘We are expected to act brave, strong, courageous to help, don’t ask for help, said Dill, a retired firefighter.

Dill became interested in mental health issues after a group from his fire station came back from helping out in New Orleans in 2005, after the devastating Hurricane Katrina.

He felt the therapy they were offered was not enough, so he started studying and began the transition from firefighter to counselor.

He has tallied 1,200 suicides over the past 20 years, including 93 in 2017.

But Dill thinks that only represents around 40 percent of the actual number of suicides, because his research depends on families and friends coming forward with the information for his list.

There is more talk these days in fire stations about mental health issues, with support groups, but there is still resistance.

Dill said he recently talked with seven firefighters diagnosed with PTSD who were ‘fired from the job because they were told: “Well you can’t do the job no more”,’ he said.

In his mission to spread the word, Dill bought a caravan so he can travel the country and talk to firefighters about their mental health.

The pair followed up with a study of nine smokejumpers – an elite class of firefighters who parachute from airplanes to fight fires – and assessed sleep, fatigue and body composition.

‘A lot of them face peer pressure to perform all the time,’ Brooks said. ‘Others feel pressured to protect natural resources and structures at all costs.’ 

The firefighters wore a wrist device called a Readiband, which kept track of how many hours of sleep they were getting.

A US military-developed formula was used to calculate levels of fatigue, which in turn can predict alertness and reaction times.

The study, conducted last year, found that firefighters lost muscle mass but gained fat based on body-composition testing before and after the season. 

Smokejumpers in the study often eat pre-made meals. Brooks wants to find out if those meals could be the reason for the loss in muscle mass.

Firefighters in the field can get as little as six hours of sleep or less each night. 

The devices indicated that the longer firefighters remained combating flames before getting a mandatory break, their reaction times began to worsen.

As the fire season progressed, the firefighters took longer to recover, Brooks said.  

Sometimes, fatigue levels reached a level that suggested reaction times slowed down so much it took firefighters twice as long to react. 

This summer, Brooks has expanded the study to include 18 firefighters, 16 men and two women, and says he soon hopes to include hotshot crews, a ground-based wildland firefighter that can, like smokejumpers, be deployed on a national basis.

According to the US Fire Administration, 65 firefighter fatalities have been reported in 2018, although the causes of death for some are waiting to be determined. 

For 2016 – the most recent year for which data is available on cause of death – of the 93 firefighter fatalities, more than 47 percent died of stress/overexertion.

Brooks says that, ultimately, firefighters themselves might be part of the problem when it comes to calculating risks while protecting natural resources and property.

‘I think we need a paradigm shift in the way we think about fighting wildfires at all cost and place a greater emphasis on personal safety over protecting resources,’ he said. ‘Trees grow back, homes can be rebuilt, but lives can’t be replaced.’  

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