Rescue medics discover good use for notorious drug

Rescue medics discover good use for notorious drug - 02 May 2008 - Topic

A notorious drug linked to date rape is being used by paramedics because it is a better painkiller than morphine in some emergencies.

The decision to use ketamine, which is also known as a party drug, follows a study by Auckland's Westpac rescue helicopter paramedics on 44 patients between January 2005 and October last year. Advanced paramedics from St John Ambulance are also now using the drug, and have trained about 160 staff nationwide to administer it.

Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust medical director Dr John Orton told the Herald that ketamine superseded morphine in many situations.

"Certain pains are fairly easily manageable with morphine-type drugs, but the excruciating acute pain of acute injury is extremely hard to get on top of with morphine," Dr Orton said.

"We're talking about 10 tonne tractors rolled on top of people ... or typical quad bike idiots on Muriwai Beach. They flip it and they've got two broken legs below the knee pointing at right angles but otherwise they're uninjured."You've got to straighten these limbs out and splint them. If you try to do that without this sort of agent, it's horrible - you cause excruciating discomfort. So to be able to do this in the field is a major bonus."

KETAMINE

• Can be snorted, injected, smoked or put in liquid and drunk.
• Used as a party drug.
• Used by vets and doctors as an anaesthetic.
• Has been associated with date rape cases.

HOW IT HELPS

• Emergency services say it is ideal for rescues where patients:
• Are trapped in or under a vehicle, or in machinery.
• Where "angulated fractures" have occurred and broken bones must be straightened while a patient is conscious.
  

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Fire Department Stresses Holiday Safety

Fire Department Stresses Holiday Safety | WEEK News 25 | Local News

The Peoria Fire Department has lit a holiday wreath it wants to keep red.

This is the 15th year for this fire safety campaign. You see, it is up to you to keep the wreath red by practicing fire safety at your home and at work.

For each residential or commercial fire in Peoria from now until January 2, the fire department replaces a red bulb with a white one.

Peoria Fire Department Division Chief Greg Walters said, "That bulb stands out in contrast with the building and it brings up a lot of questions. Why you got white bulbs on there? It gives us that opportunity to talk to the community about fire safety - in general holiday safety."

A white bulb on the wreath signifies a fire with more than $500 damage.

There were 10 white bulbs during the 2006 holiday season.

Fighting Fires With a Pop and Splash

The Associated Press: Fighting Fires With a Pop and Splash
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — William Cleary believes aerial firefighting could become child's play.

Five years ago, his son drenched him with a water balloon — and got him to thinking.

"He was three stories up and I was walking, and he still managed to hit me square in the head," said Cleary, a Boeing engineer. "I thought, why can't we be this accurate with water on fires?"

So he started working on a system to use giant water balloons to put out wildfires.

Now, Cleary has a shared patent, the support of two Fortune 500 companies and a small team of designers and engineers at his disposal on a project that could change the way fires are fought from the air.

The basic concept is simple: Biodegradable plastic balloons four feet in diameter hold 240 gallons of water; they are enclosed in cardboard boxes that are torn open by the wind when pushed out the back of a cargo plane; the balloons burst in midair, making it rain in the desert.

With the use of GPS coordinates and wind-speed calculations, the balloons could be dropped with precision from a safe altitude high above the flames, the developers say.

The balloons — which have yet to be tested on a real wildfire — would be used in addition to the usual aerial firefighting equipment: helicopters with water buckets, and air tankers.

After the inspiration from his son, Cleary started tossing water balloons off a parking garage to study their fall. But his project really took off when a paper he wrote about his concept won a Boeing innovation contest and $100,000 in research and development funding that went with it.

Paper products giant Weyerhaeuser designed the corrugated cardboard container that prevents the balloons from leaking or sloshing around in a plane's cargo hold.

"Our packages are designed to stay together and he was asking me to have this package blow apart — completely backwards from what we're used to doing," said Rick Goddard, Weyerhaeuser's bulk-packaging sales director.

The system has evolved over five years from hard plastic beachball-size balloons to the enormous water bladders made by Flexible Alternatives, a Simi Valley plastics company that also makes the straps that attach to the box lid and pull the balloon apart in midair.

The water balloons could make any plane with a ramp, a cargo bay, and a specialized GPS system into a firefighter. A C-130 cargo plane, which the Air National Guard uses to drop supplies, could fit 16 water balloons, or more than 3,800 gallons of water or fire retardant per trip.

An ordinary firefighting helicopter can hold more than 2,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, while the Forest Service's air tankers can hold 2,700 gallons of liquid in a tank permanently installed on each aircraft.

"This is like calling in the cavalry," Cleary said.

Most important, said Cleary, the planes would drop the water bombs accurately from high above the flames instead of precariously skimming the smoldering hills, the way air tankers do now.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, there were 20 aerial firefighting accidents and 13 fatalities between 2006 and 1996. Cleary said it is easy to convince the pilots who fly these missions that there's a better way.

The system is ready to be tested on a real fire on private land, Goddard said. The government requires extensive testing before new firefighting technology can be used on federal land.

The Forest Service has not yet run the numbers to see if buying thousands of disposable box-and-balloon kits at an initial price of $300 each can save enough money on equipment, manpower and other costs to make the technology worthwhile.

"It costs several millions of dollars to install a tank on an aircraft, and that lasts at least 15 years," said Carl Bambarger, an expert in aerial firefighting with the Forest Service's Technology and Development Center in San Dimas.

Bambarger said Cleary is not the first to come to him with the idea of packaging fire retardant in containers to drop from planes, but he's "the only one who's gotten this far."

While Cleary and Goddard say the cardboard and plastic will naturally break down, the debris could still prove to be an obstacle.

"There's a lot of boxes, plastic bags and lanyards that are going to land in the forest," Bambarger said. "The first person who gets hit by a fluttering piece of cardboard and sues the Forest Service — and we've had sillier things happen — the cost savings is gone."

NASA drone aids crews fighting Zaca fire

NASA drone aids crews fighting Zaca fire - Los Angeles Times The unmanned aircraft was used to map the front of the stubborn blaze, which has burned 235,000 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

Firefighters battling the stubborn Zaca fire got an assist last week from a high-flying unmanned aircraft, NASA and Ventura County officials said Friday.

NASA's Ikhana, a Predator B drone adapted for civil missions, flew over the wide-ranging fire zone once in the morning and again in the afternoon of Aug. 16 to map where the flames were heading.

The fire, which has consumed more than 235,000 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, is 83% contained. Incident commanders said they hoped to have full containment by Sept. 7.

Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper called the NASA drone a "great tool," because its sophisticated instruments captured images unseen by conventional aircraft.

"It provided intelligence as to where the front was," Roper said in a fire update Friday to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. "Otherwise we would have been blinded by the smoke."

Ikhana collected data on Zaca and three other wildfires while flying more than 1,200 miles over 10 hours, according to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

Zaca Incident Commander Mike Dietrich of the U.S. Forest Service said he was impressed with its performance.

"The images from the flight demonstrated that this technology has a future in helping us fight wild-land fires," Dietrich said in a statement.

A DC-10 jet was also used several times over the past weeks to dump 12,000 gallons of pink flame retardant with each pass, Roper told supervisors. The plane, which almost crashed in June fighting a fire over the Tehachapi mountains, is privately contracted and is the only one of its kind in the United States, he said.

Though helpful in dousing flames, the jet has limitations that make it a tool, not a "panacea," Roper said. Its girth creates air turbulence for up to 15 minutes, making it unsafe for helicopters and conventional fixed-wing planes to continue their attack, he said.

"Even if there were 20 of them, it would not put the fire out," Roper said. "We have to have crews on the ground."

Roper's report came as the Board of Supervisors approved a proclamation declaring a state of emergency. The action opens the way for Ventura County to seek state and federal reimbursement of its firefighting costs.

Total costs of battling the Zaca fire, which began July 4 near Solvang, are $99.7 million to date. Ventura County's share will be at least $50,000, Roper told supervisors.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already made similar declarations for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The fire no longer poses an immediate danger to communities, but plumes of smoke will still be visible for weeks as firefighters douse a final northwest flank, said Capt. Barry Parker, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

Los Angeles Fire Department all 'aTwitter' over Web 2.0

Los Angeles Fire Department all 'aTwitter' over Web 2.0

August 03, 2007 (Computerworld) -- The Los Angeles Fire Department has been the toast of the blogosphere in recent weeks after its efforts at using the micro-blogging site Twitter came to light.

Twitter allows users to post short (140 characters or less) notes. The fire department uses Twitter to post information about fires or other emergencies that it is responding to. These messages are then sent to users signed up to receive the information on their mobile devices.

During the May fires in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, for example, the LAFD received press inquiries from the BBC and from news media in Prague, the Czech Republic, by way of Twitter, said Brian Humphrey, LAFD's public information officer. Humphrey maintains the Web 2.0 technology with another department spokesman, Ron Myers. The pair work 12-hour shifts to update the blog, send out twitters and other duties.

Government agencies are not usually known for using cutting-edge technology, but the LAFD has immersed itself in various Web 2.0 projects, including a blog, a real-time alert service, a Flickr photo site and a live Internet radio show.

Instead of a traditional phone interview with Computerworld, Humphrey and Myers suggested the interview take place live on the department's BlogTalkRadio channel. BlogTalkRadio is a free, Web-based tool that allows anyone to host a live Internet radio show and take callers from the phone. The shows can then be made available as a podcast via RSS and iTunes. Or the hosts can place a BlogTalkRadio flash player on their site or blog so users can listen to the radio broadcasts. The entire Computerworld interview with Humphrey and Myers is available here.

Humphrey said the department began looking at Web 2.0 technologies after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. While those stranded at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans were certainly hungry and thirsty, "they were dying a little bit at a time from a lack of information," he said. "They thought they were on their own Gilligan's Island."

The LAFD uses four attributes to characterize the success of Web 2.0 tools: desirable, beneficial, justifiable and sustainable.

"We can no longer afford to work at the speed of government," he said. "We have responsibilities to the public to move the information as quickly as possible ... so that they can make key decisions."

Interest in the LAFD's effort has grown; its blog just logged its 1 millionth visitor this year, and photos on its Flickr account have been viewed 500,000 times in the past year, Humphrey said. The department has made widgets available with content it produces and uses RSS to allow more users to subscribe to updates.

But the most popular effort has been the Twitter account, which now has about 190 followers who can receive Twitter updates from a mobile device. For example, a Twitter will report that a structural fire is being battled by 30 firefighters, or that a car accident has occurred. It reads like a dispatch log of sorts from the calls the department receives and answers.

"The idea for us is that not everyone who is in need of information in times of distress will be sitting in front of a computer," Humphrey said.

While no funds have been earmarked for these projects, and Humphrey and Myers spend time on and off the clock working on them, the LAFD has more than 80 Web 2.0 projects in the pipeline that it is testing.

Humphrey advises other government agencies testing the waters of Web 2.0 not to fall into a common misconception about the technology: That it will allow an organization's voice to be heard louder, more clearly and over a greater distance.

Instead, "having this Web 2.0 presence ... allows us to listen more clearly and more accurately over a greater area," he said. "It is all about getting much more feedback [from the public]."

But the department's journey to the Web has not been without its challenges. As Humphrey, a 22-year veteran of the department who has a propeller placed under his fire helmet in his office likes to note, "I don't have a problem running into a burning building ... but stepping out into the Internet was very intimidating."

California Town Uses Goats to Stop Wildfires - Firehouse.com News

California Town Uses Goats to Stop Wildfires - Firehouse.com News

MENLO PARK -- A hungry, four-legged firefighting crew has returned to the city's hillsides.

About 450 goats from the Dixon-based Ecosystem Concepts Inc. started feasting Tuesday along the slopes of Sharon Hills Park.

The critters are in town for a couple of weeks to chew up dry brush that otherwise could turn into tinderbox fuel heading into the fire season.

"They are a really neat mowing machine," said Robert McGrew, a former firefighter who runs Ecosystem with his wife, Brea, a licensed veterinarian.

The goats have been bringing their fire-suppression skills to Menlo Park around this time every year for almost a decade, and they've turned into a kind of neighborhood tradition for those living around Sharon Hills Park.

Check out the website for these four legged firefighters by clicking here.
Goats R Us is another company that provides the same service. Click here for their website.

Intelligent Wireless Firefighter System (FIRE)

An overview of the FIRE system presented at the 2006 WIRED NextFest exhibition. The system tracks the location and condition of firefighters using miniature wireless sensors. Presented by the Discovery Channel. Aprox. 4 mins.