What sort of rehab processes or procedures do you perform on fire scenes?

We're in a unique area up here in the northwest corner of Connecticut, being the only paid department in a county made up of 99.99 percent volunteer departments. They don't really have what we have; they don't have a structured rehab program like we do. We typically [work] in conjunction with an ALS/EMS unit. We have a rehab sector on our rescue aid truck, which is a retrofitted beverage-style truck with all the necessary equipment: an awning; a sprinkler system for cooling down; assorted chairs; dry clothing for the appropriate season; and refreshments such as a Gatorade-type ofbeverage. We assign a rehab officer and, depending on the size of the incident, probably one or two privates to work in conjunction with that officer. The EMS unit is staged at that same location. If it's a long-duration incident, a Salvation Army canteen truck would be staged somewhere by rehab, too.

Robert Belancik, captain,
Torrington (Conn.) Fire Department

Well, what we do is ... not real elaborate. In any situation where we feel like we're going to need to set up a rehab sector, normally we'll ask the county emergency medical service to send us over an ambulance, and then we set up a separate area where we can rotate our firefighters through. That protects our area and lets them be monitored by the EMS folks. We try to get them re-hydrated and rested, warmed up or cooled off, whatever the situation may be, and then work them back in if we need them.

I don't think we really have a threshold for determining need. It's the determination of the on-scene commander, whether he thinks he's going to need [a rehab sector] or not. I wouldn't say it's an automatic process. If it looks like it's going to be a situation where I'm going to be rotating people through, I'm going to set one up.

Brian Mullinax, assistant commander,
Spartanburg (S.C.) Fire Department

It's been kind of a hodge-podge system [up to now]. We're a pretty small department. When we've had enough [people] here, they've set up Gatorade and that type of stuff and taken it to the scene. We've never had a formal process before, as far as setting up criteria for taking blood pressures and monitoring pulses and that type of stuff, and that's something we're just getting into right now. We're in the process of [developing] a more formalized procedure so that we can do a better job with what we've got.

We just started a support group — they were volunteers who basically got older and moved into support. One of their jobs will be to come in and set up a rehab area for us, bring in the juices, the Gatorade. They've got some medical training; they'll monitor the vital signs and things like that for us. We're in the process of setting up a trailer. But it hasn't gotten started yet; we're more in the planning stages here.

We do have several organizations here in town that work closely with us — the VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars [for instance]. If we have big incidents, they'll come down with drinks and food and set up a station for the firefighters.

Bill Gilliland, captain,
Pendleton (Ore.) Fire & Ambulance.

We work pretty closely with a countybased ambulance service here in Johnson County. They run EMS with us on fire scenes. On a regular alarm, they will set up rehab a few doors down (usually) from wherever we're working. After using two bottles, we're required to come out and get our blood pressure checked, see how we're feeling, talk to the paramedics. On bigger incidents, they can also bring ... a canvas canopy [to] provide us some shade. I believe they are working on — and they may already have this — some type of enclosed shelter for when it's cold. They do have misters ... [and] we get refreshments as well. They do provide us with just about everything we need—and quickly. The paramedics are really good at doing that for us. We are pretty well covered here, that's for sure.

Tony Lopez, captain,
Johnson County Consolidated Fire District 2,
Prairie Village, Kan.

Look for a full-length feature on rehab in an upcoming issue of FIRERESCUE—ed.