Rough Fire Pinned by Burning Log 2015

In the wildland fire world, even in the best case scenarios, it takes time for staged resources to reach an emergency medical scene. The medical emergency Incident-Within-an-Incident discussed in this review benefitted from an atypical overabundance of medical resources positioned relatively close to the scene. What’s more, these resources were equipped with the latest extraction technology as well as advanced medical care. The injury to this firefighter occurred close to a helispot, less than half-a-mile from a road—with a 20-minute flight to a hospital with a burn center. 

How often do we have all of these things going for us? How often are we farther removed from most—or all—of these resources? Yet, in spite of all this, it took an hour for Advanced Life Support and a Rapid Extraction Module to arrive on scene. From the time of injury until the patient arrived at the hospital took almost three hours. Why?

Medevac, Hand Crews, Burn Injury, Extended Attack, Burn Injury