Firefighting is widely recognized as a hazardous occupation. In particular, fire scenes are unpredictable and dangerous environments characterized by loud noise, high temperatures, flames, smoke with gaseous and particulate toxicants, and potential structural instability of affected buildings, among other hazards. Accordingly, during fire suppression, firefighters are at risk for various injuri...

Firefighting is a hazardous and physically demanding activity. The demanding nature of the tasks involved in firefighting requires a high level of fitness both for the safety of the firefighting personnel as well as for the adequate performance of their tasks. Here, the characteristics (body weight, lung function, etc.) of a small group of refinery firefighters were investigated using explorato...

Background Fire service workers often implement multiple duties in the emergency conditions, with such duties being mostly conducted in various ambient temperatures. Methods The aim of the current study was to assess the firefighters' physiological responses, information processing, and working memory prior to and following simulated firefighting activities in three different hot environments...

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the current use and fit of structural firefighting gloves and developed an improved sizing scheme that better accommodates the U.S. firefighter population. BACKGROUND Among surveys, 24% to 30% of men and 31% to 62% of women reported experiencing problems with the fit or bulkiness of their structural firefighting gloves. METHOD An age-, race/ethnicity-, and gender-stra...

We consider the problem of firefighting to save a critical subset of nodes. The firefighting game is a turn-based game played on a graph, where the fire spreads to vertices in a breadth-first manner from a source, and firefighters can be placed on yet unburnt vertices on alternate rounds to block the fire. In this work, we consider the problem of saving a critical subset of nodes from catching ...

firefighting is extremely strenuous and physically demanding work and involves ability to cope with emergency life-or-death situations. because of the high physical demands of firefighting, successful job performance and minimizing of morbidity and mortality depends on fitness for duty. the firefighting department of tehran does not perform periodic medical assessment for firefighters. the aim ...

In this paper we describe a functional goal decomposition of urban firefighting as part of a larger cognitive task analysis. Previous research indicates that firefighter decision strategies employ a pattern-matching technique that allows them to choose the first workable option based on similar previous experiences. This study builds upon this research by employing multiple cognitive task analy...

Airplanes and helicopters are integral to the management and suppression of wildfires, often operating in high-risk, low-altitude environments. To update data on aviation-related wildland firefighting fatalities, identify risk factors, and make recommendations for improved safety, CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) analyzed reports from multiple data sources for...