Rehab Rigs Come in Many Variations with the Mission to Keep Firefighters Safe
With about half of line-of-duty deaths attributed to cardiac events and an increasing emphasis on firefighter health, rehab at incident scenes is more important than ever. Apparatus and equipment dedicated to that mission continues to be an important market in the fire service.
Conveyances to transport all the equipment to do effective rehabilitation run the gambit from converted bread trucks and ambulances to trailers and custom, dedicated vehicles. Firehouse spoke with a couple of manufacturers, LDV and Summit Fire Apparatus, to learn more about what fire departments should consider when specifying a rehabilitation apparatus.
LDV
At LDV, a manufacturer of emergency response and specialty vehicles in Burlington, WI, employees make a variety of vehicles for rehab from brand-new, dedicated custom units to refurbished tool sales trucks and everything in between.
“It all depends on the department’s budget,” said Scott Remer, a sales specialist for LDV, who is also the fire chief for Kansasville, WI, Fire and Rescue Volunteer Fire Department. “We are seeing a large range of vehicles from vans, to food service trucks, to buses being used if there’s a larger quantity of ladies and gentlemen who need to get out of the cold and extreme heat and keeping them out of the weather.”
Remer said firefighter rehab is now a requirement of most departments and it is very important to keeping firefighters safe and healthy.
In fact, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has guidelines spelled out in NFPA 1584 “Standard on the Rehabilitation Process for Members During Emergency Operations and Training Exercises.”
While the standard doesn’t specify what type of rig is needed, it does have a lot of guidance for what is needed at the site. It standard lists 22 items, including portable shelters, fans and blowers, dry clothing, lighting, electrical generating, misting and cooling equipment, beverage serving equipment, portable toilets, food and a wide variety of sundries.
It’s clear that to do rehab right, it’s going to take more than what a pumper or a rescue can carry, unless it’s specified to do that from the get-go.
Remer said a lot of fire departments have refurbished and repurposed vehicles that can tote all that stuff around to fire and emergency scenes.
“They are assets that don’t get utilized a lot,” he said.
But when they are deployed, they’re expected to do a lot, including providing shelter for firefighters, responders as well as victims. Remer said a small bus can accommodate up to 15 people and carry a lot of the items needed for rehab work.
There are some basics fire departments should have when specifying a new or retrofitted rehab unit, according to Remer. Shelter for the responders tops the list, whether it’s inside the vehicle, or under portable shelter, for EMS to monitor personnel and provide minor treatments, as well as providing rehydration, he said.
“There’s a need for lots of storage, air conditioning and heat to provide the proper climate for rehabilitation,” Remer said.
Mary Lynch, director of marketing for LDV, said work benches and seating are also necessary as well as a galley, or some means for providing food and water for the responders. She added that it’s also important that some of the rehab supplies, including water and food, should be accessible from the outside as well. Remer added that good outside lighting and awning are essential, in addition to seating.
If the rehab unit requires responders to get inside the vehicle, there should be a place for firefighters and responders to take off their gear and keep it dry and out of the elements, Remer said, noting there’s no need to bring all the contaminants inside.
Remer and Lynch agree that departments should develop a list of core needs and build a vehicle to meet the needs. Too often, Lynch said, departments think they can’t afford something and delete it. However, the better approach is to save room for a piece of equipment, or add the wiring or plumbing during construction, even if the item isn’t added until years later, he said.
An example of that is illustrated by the members of the Milwaukee Fire Bell Club, a group of 40 volunteers dedicated to providing rehab services to firefighters. Remer said the club members started out with a new, purpose built vehicle and took three years to add different components to the unit as it received donations to do the work. He added that the members started out with their “core priorities” and built the apparatus out as funds became available.
LDV has done rehab units for as little as $30,000 to north of $350,000, Remer said, but they all have the same mission, and that is to keep firefighters safe.
While rehab units are deployed throughout the United States, Remer is seeing it becoming a bigger trend in the Northeast and Midwest, where there are typically more people and, therefore, more fires and emergencies.
“I see it growing as people start to realize how important it is,” Remer said, adding that rehab units are necessarily found were there are more fires.
Remer also observed that no two rehab units are alike.
“Departments pick what is best for them,” Remer said. “They’re all across the board.” He said there are some refurbished box trucks with long benches inside and refurbished ambulances because they are often readily available.
Summit Fire Apparatus
Joe Messmer, owner and president of Summit Fire Apparatus in Edgewood, KY, has some different ideas about rehab units. He thinks trailers and mobile pods are the answer.
“When you have rehab supplies on a vehicle, it gets too close to the scene,” Messmer said. “You don’t want the rehab vehicle too close to the scene. Rehab needs to be close enough for firefighters to use, but it needs to be far enough away so they get away from the scene.”
Messmer said the answer to strike that happy medium is to buy a trailer for “not too much money” and outfit it with all the equipment needed. A trailer is plenty big enough to carry a pop-up shelter, and Messmer makes special brackets for them, as well as cooling chairs, portable propane heaters, curtains for around the tent and other necessary items.
Tents that can be put up anywhere are more efficient than vehicle-mounted awnings, Messmer said. That’s because they can be moved to place more appropriate for rehab.
“Whenever you see an awning opened up, it’s usually on concrete or blacktop, not the best places to put them,” Messmer said, explaining that in the hot sun, blacktop radiates heat and concrete is not a very good thermal surface either. With a tent, it can be moved to a shaded or grassy area.
By setting it up 50 to 100 feet away, the setting might be a little more comfortable, Messmer said.
The trailers Summit convert into rehab units typically have long benches that are made out of the same material hosebeds on pumpers are constructed. That leaves plenty of room down the center, between the benches, for storage of equipment, like generators.
And when specifying a generator for a rehab unit, Messmer said firefighters should get something rated at 17,000-watts or larger to power beefy air conditioning units.
“You’ll want two ‘hang-meat’ air conditioners,” Messmer said. “You need to cool them down quickly and you don’t need something wimpy to do it,” Messmer said. “You’ll need a good heater to warm them up too.”
Messmer recommends rehab units be powered by propane, including the heating and the generator. It eliminates the problem with gasoline, which can go bad in as little as 30 days—something that would happen often with infrequently used equipment.
Rehab units also need bathrooms, and big refrigerators—17 cubic feet or bigger—filled with water bottles and fasteners on the doors so they won’t all spill out during transport. When it’s back at the station, the refrigerator in the rehab unit, whether it’s a trailer or a vehicle, can run on shoreline power.
Messmer said with a trailer, access can often be gained through the rear door that is at ground level and doesn’t require any climbing up in as a motorized vehicle might. He said there aren’t many fire departments that want to, or can, devote the kind of financial resources a motorized vehicle requires. “I don’t find customers that want to invest that kind of money,” Messmer said.
Messmer also said it doesn’t make much sense to dedicate a lot of room on a pumper or even a rescue apparatus to rehab work. “They are distinct missions,” he said. “If you put too many missions on one apparatus, something is going to suffer. It becomes a real struggle.”
He also said he often sees departments that try to put too much on an apparatus suddenly have trouble getting it all back in place six months later. “Not everybody is that organized,” Messmer said noting that when people have factory or dealer loose equipment set ups, the organization of the apparatus is forgotten. To avoid that, Messmer said he’s had chiefs ask for shadow cut outs mounted so firefighters won’t forget where things go.
Another problem with apparatus-based, cube-style rigs is the lack of outside access to equipment. A trailer allows fire departments to place doors on the sides to access bathrooms, or large volumes of equipment, he said. Behind each door, like equipment can be stored and accessed quickly without having to empty everything piled on top of everything else.
“There are more efficient ways of storing things,” Messmer said. “A full-enclosed vehicle doesn’t work very well for that.”
Another concept that deserves some attention is a pod, or roll-off container, Messmer said. Although he doesn’t manufacture them, Messmer said the idea is a good one, although it hasn’t been widely accepted yet.
“I think there’s a place for that concept,” said Messmer, who has been in the fire apparatus business going on nearly 50 years. He said one apparatus can do many things with a roll-off system, like a Dumpster truck. A few firefighters could be trained in deployment operations and the unit could be set up at a scene and the apparatus could go back in service or get repurposed for delivery of another pod for a different mission.
In all instances, rehab units have one mission, no matter how it’s delivered and that is to keep firefighters safe.
“You want to keep them as healthy as possible,” Remer said. “You don’t want them coming out of a scene and collapse and die. …That’s why we have rehab.”
