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ABC15 Arizona @abc15.com
Jul 11, 11:00 AM

As Phoenix temperatures continue to rise, firefighters are using a blue body and bags of ice to rapidly cool heat stroke patients who are being rescued from Valley mountains. ABC15’s Ford Hatchett spoke with Phoenix Fire about how it’s helping save lives.

🎤 Whisper Transcript (en) ⏱ 74s

"I'm Ford Hatchet inside of Phoenix Firehouse getting a look at some technology Phoenix firefighters are using. They say has already saved lives from heat exhaustion. Just uses a blue bag and some stuff you probably already have in your cooler. What we're gonna do right now is that if we get on scene and we have a patient that is in heat stroke, what we're gonna do is we're gonna lay out our cold water immersion bag. We're gonna dump three bags of ice, three to four bags of ice, and then we're immediately going to put that patient in the cold water immersion bag. So now what they're gonna do is that they're gonna take the rest of the ice, whether it's three, four, five bags of ice, and they are going to submerge the patient, keeping the chest exposed in case we have to do any kind of CPR or any defibrillation, any cardiac work. So the chest stays exposed? Chest stays exposed, we're gonna zip the bag up and in this situation we're not gonna be able to do it but we are going to elevate the head 30 degrees. Our goal is to get this patient below 101 degrees when we transfer care to the hospital. We've seen a very successful result from this is that patients are actually unconscious when we get on scene. By the time we transfer care, they're awake and talking to us. It's absolute fabulous utility that we've been using during our hot summer days."

💬 Discussion

ABC15 Arizona @abc15.com · Jul 9, 07:02 PM

As Phoenix temperatures continue to rise, firefighters are using a blue body and bags of ice to rapidly cool heat stroke patients who are being rescued from Valley mountains. ABC15’s Ford Hatchett spoke with Phoenix Fire about how it’s helping save lives.