PHOENIX, June 5, (AP): The season’s first heat wave is already baking the Southwest with triple-digit temperatures as firefighters in Phoenix – America’s hottest big city – employ new tactics in hopes of saving more lives in a county that saw 645 heat-related deaths last year.
Starting this season, the Phoenix Fire Department is immersing heatstroke victims in ice on the way to area hospitals. The medical technique, known as cold water immersion, is familiar to marathon runners and military service members and has also recently been adopted by Phoenix hospitals as a go-to protocol, said Fire Capt John Prato.
Prato demonstrated the method earlier this week outside the emergency department of Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, packing ice cubes inside an impermeable blue bag around a medical dummy representing a patient. He said the technique could dramatically lower body temperature in minutes.
“Just last week we had a critical patient that we were able to bring back before we walked through the emergency room doors,” Prato said. “That’s our goal – to improve patient survivability.”
The heatstroke treatment has made ice and human-sized immersion bags standard equipment on all Phoenix fire department emergency vehicles. It is among measures the city adopted this year as temperatures and their human toll soar ever higher. Phoenix for the first time is also keeping two cooling stations open overnight this season.
Emergency responders in much of an area stretching from southeast California to central Arizona are preparing for what the National Weather Service said would be “easily their hottest” weather since last September.