Spring Fire Featured at Fire Rescue International

by Hannah Falcon

Chosen to be one of seven departments featured from across the globe, a video highlighting the Spring Fire Department’s firefighter wellness programs is premiering at the 2018 Fire Rescue International (FRI) conference in Dallas.

The video highlights Spring Fire’s ongoing effort to improve firefighter wellness with a series of preventative measures. Assistant Chief Robert Logan calls firefighters Spring Fire’s top assets.

“We use a mentality of the firefighter comes first,” Logan said. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get them the best wellness, equipment, health and fitness they can get.”

Spring Fire teamed up with three of their health care partners to create the video that shares Spring’s firefighter health efforts with other departments around the world. Metis Tactical, Decon Systems and LifeScan Wellness joined in the video project.

Hunt Whitten is the CEO and founder of Metis Tactical, a company that works with first responders on prehabilition and rehabilitation. Prehabilitation is a process of exercises that Metis Tactical leads in order to prevent firefighter injury.

“At Metis Tactical, we’re a team of sports medicine experts who are dedicated to protecting first responders from line of duty injury,” Whitten said. “We use 3D motion technology to asses, identify and correct impaired movement that can lead to injury.”

Spring Firefighter Jason Randall aggravated an old military injury while on the job. Randall’s doctors told him that the spinal injury would keep him from ever being a firefighter again, but thanks to help he received from Spring Fire and Metis Tactical Randall returned to work in July.

“The post injury rehabilitation through Metis Tactical really helped me to address the specific issues that I had with my injury,” Randall said. “Having an injury where you’re told that your career is over but being able to come back from that and work with people who are doing it the right way, they’re doing it the correct way, puts your whole career into prospective.”

Smoke from any fire contains toxins that can cause cancer or other illnesses. That led Rodney Palmer to design Decon Systems. After every fire, Spring firefighters are required to enter a Decon System sauna where they ride a specially designed stationary bicycle in order to sweat out toxins.

“The Decon System is a low-temperature sauna that is designed specifically for firefighters so they can get in and sweat out toxins without raising their core temperature,” Palmer said. “The infrared heat makes their skin sweat very quickly so that within ten minutes they can sweat out the toxins that they were exposed to at the fire.”

Before Decon Systems, firefighters would smell like smoke for days after fighting a fire, according to Spring Captain Tim Weiman. Firefighters used to carry around those harmful toxins until they eventually soaked into their skin.

“When you get out of a fire you can smell your skin. You can take four or five showers and you still smell like smoke, but when you’re in there sweating you can smell the smoke coming off of you,” Weiman said. “I like being able to sweat out all the toxins from my job and knowing that I’m not taking that home to my family.”

Early detection is key for cancer and that especially goes for firefighters, who have been proven to have higher rates of cancer than most civilians, LifeScan Wellness is an annual physical that checks for cancer and other health issues in first responders.

“LifeScan Wellness is an integrative approach to firefighter physicals,” said Patricia Johnson, founder and CEO of LifeScan Wellness. “We follow the NFPA 15-82 guidelines to perform occupational physicals for firefighters, but most importantly we have integrated early detection testing utilizing ultrasound and advanced lab work to be able to really help in the mitigation of cancer and heart disease.”

Thanks to his annual LifeScan Wellness physical, Spring Fire Senior Captain Matt Corso’s cancer was diagnosed before he had any symptoms. Due to early detection, Corso was able to return to work healthy and grateful in merely a few months.

“Spring looks at it as ‘We need to do what we can to prevent that, we need to take care of our people because they’re our number one asset,’” Corso said. “For less than the cost of a dress uniform to bury me in, this fire department saved my life.”

Spring is a fast growing area and the fire department is working hard to keep their firefighters healthy. Fire Chief Scott Seifert hopes other departments can learn how to take the steps Spring Fire has from the FRI video.

“I see a bright future for our fire department and we do everything we can to ensure that we provide the best level of service to everyone and we need to make sure that our firefighters are equipped with everything they need to be successful,” Seifert said.

Hannah Falcon is a sophomore Communication major at Texas A&M University. A Staff Writer and Life & Arts Editor for the Texas A&M Battalion, Falcon is spending the summer as a volunteer writer for Spring Fire Community News.