About Rhabdomyolysis and Wildland Firefighters

I hope that I never stop learning about wildfires and the risks that wildland firefighters take to protect us from wildfires. Several days ago, thanks to my friends at the B10 NJ Wildfire Page who shared a video from the Wildland Fire LLC, I learned about a medical condition known as Rhabdomyolysis and how Rhabdo (as it commonly called) affects wildland firefighters. Rhabdo can affect kidney function and sometimes leads to death. Before I share the video, Wildland Fire Lesson Learned has some materials on Rhabdomyolysis on their website that those of you who want to learn more may want to read. Wildland crew supervisors are encouraged to carry this one-pager that describes symptoms of Rhabdo that they and their crew should watch for, see the image below. Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today has written about Rhabdomyolysis (tagged posts), I point you to the article that he posted on May 17, 2016 about an analysis by the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center of May 2, 2016 Rhabdo injury.

obtained on June 2, 2017 from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center

Direct link to video by Wildland Fire LLC (about 21 minutes)