COVID-19 drones fire may like wildfire season Ramps Up

Jon Paul was suspicious of his first field wildfire of the year at the end of last month the three lightning input to fight with fires scorching parts of a Northern California forest that had not burned in 40 years. The 54-year-old engine captain from southern Oregon knew from experience that it can be filled, the seedy warehouse reasons for Norovirus and respiratory disease of livestock that firefighters call the “field crud” in a normal year. He wondered what COVID-19 would do in tent camps, where hundreds of men and women, eat, sleep, wash and spend their downtime between the layers. Paul thought of his wife immunocompromised and 84 years, back to the parent company. Then he joined the approximately 1,300 people distributed on the Modoc National Forest, which would represent an important test for the COVID available preventive measures that had been developed for the fire in the open field. “We are still first responders and we have to go this responsibility with these emergencies and treat,” he says. “I cringe not easy, but I am very cautious and concerned about my environment. I will still work and do my job.” Paul is in trouble throughout the West to burn one of the thousands of firefighters from around the dozens US forest fire. E ‘an inherently dangerous work, which now also carries the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Each outbreak that waves through a stock could easily side crews and the spread of the virus on the fire and the community through national transfers, as the staff in and out of “hot spots” and return home. Although most firefighters are young and fit, a bit ‘inevitably get sick in these remote communities makeshift showers and portable toilets, where medical care may be limited. The pollutants in the smoke that they breathe makes them more susceptible to COVID-19 and can worsen the effects of the disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and prevention daily. Even a single suspect or positive in storage means many more fighters should be quarantined, do not work in place. The worst case scenario is that several outbreaks of the nation’s ability to respond to wildfire season could cripple the summit in August, the month hotter and drier months of the year in the western United States, the number of burned so far this morning ‘under 10 years it is the average year, but the outlook of fire for August is above average in nine states, according to the National Interagency fire Center. Twenty-two large fires lit by Northwest storms passed exclusively by lightning on August 17, and two days later declared California a state of emergency due to uncontrolled forest fires. A study this month by researchers at Colorado State University and the conclusion published forestry station US Service Rocky Mountain Research that COVID-19 “could be a serious threat to firefighters mission” outbreaks and called social distancing, alert and screening measures In fields. “If the simultaneous fires are caused outbreaks, the entire open terrain response system emphasizes especially with a large part of the workforce could be quarantined,” she wrote the study authors. This spring the Fire National Coordination Council of Wildfire Group wrote, and since then the protocols to date to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on fire stock, based on CDC guidelines: firefighters for fever and other symptoms should be investigated when they come available. Each team must be isolated as a “module from a” for the fire season and limit interactions with other teams. Firefighters must maintain social contacts and face coverings worn when social distancing is impossible. fields smaller satellites, known as “top” field can be constructed to ensure sufficient space. shared surfaces must be cleaned and disinfected regularly, and sharing of tools and radios must be minimized. The guidelines do not include the practice of firefighters just arrived routine testing for athletes in the fields and training students to go to universities. The fire board of Forest Fire Medicine and Public Health Advisory Team wrote in a statement on July 2 that “are not universal COVID-19 testing laboratory is not recommended as a mitigation independent risk or screening measure in open terrain using brigade fire.” Instead recommend the test group, and individual staff person is exposed, said this approach in line with CDC guidance. To test the lack of capacity and long maturities are factors to Forest Service spokesman Dan Hottle. (The exception is Alaska where the fire will be tested upon arrival at the airport and asked in a quarantined hotel, and expect results that arrive within 24 hours, says Hottle.) Fire crews early season fires had reacted spring some problems with adapting to new protocols, written by feedback of emergency exits and forest fires lessons learned center. Shawn Faiella, head of the interagency “crew hotshot” – so called because they are the biggest challenge, or “heißesten” parts of the fire work – based on Montana Lolo National Forest, questioned the need to wear masks in vehicles and security bring extra trip for a vehicle blaze into space by firefighters. Parking additional vehicles on the scene of a fire in the forest narrow dirt road is difficult and it would be dangerous if evacuations are necessary, he wrote. “It ‘s damn hard these practices, to take the line of fire,” Faiella wrote after his team to a 40-acre reacts Montana fire in April. A recommendation that fire managers say they were particularly effective, the “form of a” concept is requiring crew to eat and sleep together in solitary confinement for the entire fire season. “Anyone on, it works,” says Mike Goicoechea, chief Montana-based operations for North-Type 1 Team of the Forest Service, which manages the largest fire and complex nation and natural disasters. “Can someone testing positive, and take you end up with the module for 14 days out of service. But the beauty of it is, you is not got a whole warehouse. … It ‘s just that form.” There is no single system that tracks the total number of positive cases in COVID-19 fighters of the ground opened fire between the various federal, state, local and tribal agencies. Each fireplace has its own method, says Jessica Gardetto, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management and the National Interagency Fire Center in Idaho. The largest agency fighting forest fires in the United States is the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture, with 10,000 firefighters. Another important agency is the Department of the Interior, which took fire employees last year, more than 3,500 full-time. From the first week of August 111 Forest Service firefighters and 40 BLM Firefighters (under the wider internal section temporary) were positive for COVID-19, according to officials for their respective agencies. “Given that we now have the fire activity experienced for several months, this number is surprisingly low when you consider the thousands of firefighters who walked on the forest fires this summer,” said Gardetto. Goicoechea and his team traveled to northern Montana in Tucson, Arizona, to manage a rapidly spreading fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains, on June 22, 1200 responders needed at its peak. Within two days of arrival of the team, its managers were worried overwhelmed by calls from firefighters or prevent or with questions about the spread of COVID-19 viruses bring home to their families. In an unusual step, Goicoechea called to a Montana doctor and former National Park Service Ranger with wildfire experience-Dr. Harry Sibold join the team. Doctors are rarely, if ever, part of a field running medical group says Goicoechea fire. Sibold crown regular updates during the morning briefing, consultation with local health authorities were worried about the fire eased on the virus to bring home to their families and advise those responsible for the fire how to handle scenarios that could come. But Sibold said at the beginning about the interception crown at bay in a department store in Pima County are not optimistic about the second highest number of confirmed cases in Arizona currently has a national 19-point COVID hot. “I firmly expect that we could have two or three outbreaks,” he says. There were no positive cases during the two-week mission of the team, only three or four cases where a firefighter showed symptoms but tested negative for the virus. After the team of Montana is back home, nine firefighters on Arizona fire from other units tested positive, says Goicoechea. tracers shared contact the Montana team, some of which have been tested. All tests returned negative. “I can not say enough about that doctor for help,” he says suggesting Goicoechea, other teams may want to consider doing the same. “We are not experts in a pandemic. We are the experts with fire.” The success early as the number of fires increases will be tested the West, along with the number of fire brigade to respond to them. There were more than 15,000 firefighters and support to the fires in all personnel assigned nation since mid-August, and the success of this COVID-19 protocols of prevention largely depends on them. Paul, Oregon firefighter, said that the guidelines were tight in the field, but less from the line of fire. It ‘also seemed younger brigade fire were less likely to masking and social distancing rules to follow, such as veterans like him. What worries me is not much to paralyze a Kindle outbreak, could the crews out of action and the ability to respond to a fire. “We are outside, so it definitely helps to mitigate and facilitates the social distance,” says Paul. “But I think if there is a mistake made, it could happen.” KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a service of nonprofit information covering health issues. It is an independent publishing program KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) not with Kaiser Permanente.
Picture copyright by Josh Edelson AFP / Getty Images attacked