By Mike Morris
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Heat forces firefighters to drink plenty to put on gear, battle blazes. They’re told to hydrate a day before shifts begin.
Temperatures soaring into the 90s are bad enough for people in T-shirts and shorts.
Try putting on 60 pounds of gear and standing next to a burning building for a while.
Metro Atlanta firefighters beat the heat the same way they battle blazes: with plenty of water.
“We’ve been watching the temperatures, knowing that they’re going to escalate, and we’ve started our regimen of constantly reiterating staying hydrated, staying hydrated, staying hydrated,” Atlanta Fire Battalion Chief Roderick Smith told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We want to make sure they’re hydrating, not just on shift, but start hydrating the day before you come to work so you can endure some of these challenges.”
Smith said his department also sends additional crews out on alarms when temperatures get this high.
“If we’re going to stay there for a while,” Smith said, “we’re going to need to rotate the crews out and give the guys and girls a break.”
To help low-income families and individuals beat the heat, the Salvation Army this week is distributing 1,000 free box fans.
The fans are being provided to metro Atlantans without air-conditioning units or sufficient funds to pay for air-conditioning units, Salvation Army spokeswoman Sheena Gadson said.
High temperatures across metro Atlanta are expected to be in the mid-90s through the weekend. That’s about a dozen degrees hotter than normal for early June.
Making matters worse, it’s also been drier than normal in recent weeks. Atlanta finished May with a rainfall deficit for the month of 1.02 inches and a deficit for the year that stands at 0.73 inch.
Atlanta has been more fortunate than other parts of Georgia, where state climatologist David Stooksbury says drought conditions worsened during May.
“The southern half of the state is being hit the hardest,” he said.
Stooksbury classified areas of the state roughly south of a line from Columbus to Macon to Waynesboro as being in “extreme drought.” He said over the past six months, Columbus has received only 63 percent of the rain it normally does, while Macon has recorded 60 percent of its normal rainfall.
Closer to Atlanta, several metro counties, including Carroll, Clayton, Coweta, Fayette, Henry, Newton and Rockdale, are in what Stooksbury called a “moderate” drought.
Stooksbury classified the rest of North Georgia as “abnormally dry.”
Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution