NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Chief Steven Beer is serious about doing everything his department can to mitigate cancer risk in firefighters as they join his department.
"Cancer in the fire service is one of the hot topics across the board," Beer said. "A firefighter has an increased chance of getting 22 different kinds of cancers, compared to the general population. Another stat that a lot of people don't realize, an average firefighter dies ten years younger, lives ten years younger than the average person. We have to address the black cloud in the room and that's the cancer issue."
That was a big reason for some of the design of new Station 1 on North Main in Hutchinson.
"You come to all our stations now, you'll see these big hoses hooked up to all the diesel exhaust ports on all the equipment, the trucks, the fire trucks, that's exhausted out the roof. The bigger part of the picture is the program that we've instilled in our organization. We still have some work to do at our other stations, to get caught up to this philosophy. When a firefighter goes on, whether it's a car fire, dumpster fire, house fire, right away in the morning, they go to the scene. They'll actually start a decon process right at the scene. They'll scrub down. We have like a garden hose, a special soap. They'll scrub each other off there and they'll put their gear in a bag. They'll bring that back to the station. In this case, the new fire station has a dedicated decon room. They'll bring their gear over there and they'll put this into a unit we call an extractor, which is basically a big, glorified wash machine. From that point, there's two showers located out on the apparatus floor. They'll actually go into those showers, shower and scrub all those carcinogens off their body. At that point, they'll have their dirty t-shirts and regular clothes. They'll put that in a bag. They'll get into a pair of medical scrubs, just like a doctor or nurse wears and then they'll walk back to the decon room with their regular daily uniform, put that into the washing machine. At that time and only that time, you'll be allowed to walk into the living quarters."
The living quarters are marked cancer free zone, just to emphasize the point of all of this procedure.
"We're trying to keep all of the contaminants out of the living quarters," Beer said. "The goal at the end of the day is that every one of my firefighters have a healthy retirement. It's such a culture shift right now in our line of work that, if you open any of the trade magazines that pertain to fire, ten years ago, you would open one and you would see the dirty old firefighter with soot on his face and the black conditions and stuff like that. Now, if you open a new magazine, you're going to see a firefighter looking clean and sharp. His gear is laundered. We changed that culture where dirty gear was a cool, macho looking thing. Now, you're looking for the guy who takes care of his stuff, who has got the clean gear."
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is looking for firefighters to voluntarily register, whether they have cancer or not, so they can better assess cancer risk among firefighters in the coming years.
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