Courtesy Photo | 10/24/05-ALI BASE, Iraq - First responders, including medical technician Senior Airman...... read more read more
Story and photos by Tech. Sgt. Paul Dean
407th Air Expeditionary Group public affairs
10/24/05"ALI BASE, Iraq -- Choosing pizza toppings to fit your mood can sometimes take a few minutes. Firefighters responding to a mass casualty event often have only seconds to decide whose life they can save.
Amongst chaos, smoke, fire, unexploded ordinance and myriad other distractions firefighters must sift through, finding victims can be a daunting yet rewarding task. But the true payoff is being the first person on-scene to give the gift of life to those who would have had no hope otherwise. It's a hefty charge to put on any person, but firefighters assigned to the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron Ali Base Fire and Emergency Response department have been actively practicing their skills and say they are ready.
The job of the firefighter is to evacuate the injured to a safe place where medical teams can triage and start medical treatment, said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Anthony Ghim, flight surgeon for the 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron. Triage is a system where patients are quickly assessed to prioritize treatment. If medical help can't get to the scene, then firefighters will be deciding who goes to the hospital first.
Sometimes the choice is obvious. Other times it isn't.
Whatever's going to happen it has to happen fast, said Dr. Ghim. "Some people are going to die very quickly, within seconds or minutes where nothing humanly possible can be done to save them. Then there's what we call the Golden Hour. It's the first hour after severe trauma where the body can react, before the victim slides into irreversible shock. Shock is a continuously degrading situation. The body will start to shut itself down, putting all its efforts toward keeping the heart and brain going, but there has to be medical intervention if we are going to save the person."
Technical school for firefighters includes 40 hours of first responder instruction, basic medical first aid; and Dead, Injured and Missing coursework, said Staff Sgt. Arley Paulus, training noncommissioned officer for the fire and emergency response department. The firefighters are able to classify patients based on urgency by the time they graduate technical school, and the skills are continually enhanced he said.
In reality, there's a greater potential for miscalculations when decisions are instantaneous and made under severe conditions, but "If there's the slightest chance that we think somebody can be saved we get them out," said Chief Master Sgt. Jeff Barnes, Ali Base fire chief. "That's part of the firefighter's mindset. We are in business to save as many lives as we can."
But although experience and training have put the chief in position of comfort, he leads several dozen much less experienced firefighters.
"It can be tougher for the younger [firefighters] to detach themselves from the [personal level] of a situation," said Tech. Sgt. James Ralls, a firefighter and emergency medical technician with the department. But continuous, realistic training builds on the things learned in technical school to a point where firefighters are able to look at the casualties and think in terms of "What can we do, and who do we take care of first," the sergeant said.
Fortunately, the firefighters live in an atmosphere where training doesn't follow a nine-to-five schedule.
"Being in a fire department is like nothing else. We live and eat together. We take care of and teach each other. We train each other even when we aren't 'training,"" said Sergeant Ralls.
Airman 1st Class Kyle Henson is picking up knowledge and experience fast during this deployment. And he's eager to learn more skills to save lives. "There's never enough training. Things are always changing. There are always new techniques. We want to train all the time to stay up on things."
And Airman Henson already has a frame of reference for mass casualty triage situations. It was given to him and his classmates early on in his training as a firefighter when the class was asked to think a scenario through and to use the answer in the future: What do you do if you are en route to an accident scene and one of the fire trucks crashes and rolls over?
Airman Henson is confident that he can answer any call today the same way he would answer the scenario question: "Sure, the firefighters may be your best friends, but you have to think things through. You have to decide quickly what to do, where you can be the most help, where you can save the most lives."
From the bottom to the top, the firefighters of the 407th ECS Ali Base Fire and Rescue Department have one goal and continue to train toward its achievement: if and when there is a mass casualty event here, they will save everybody who can be.
| Date Taken: | 10.26.2005 |
| Date Posted: | 10.26.2005 12:27 |
| Story ID: | 3479 |
| Location: |
| Web Views: | 116 |
| Downloads: | 41 |
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