S.F. squad ready to rescue rescuers
Created in 2016, specially trained fire department team wants to set standard for helping injured firefighters
When the Santa Fe Fire Department Rapid Extraction Module showed up at the Coyote Fire in the Guadalupe Mountains on the New Mexico/Texas border in 2016, nobody knew what it was. The four-person squad, launched by the city of Santa Fe Fire Department in 2016 and one of a growing number of teams like it in the nation, was on its first fire. Its mandate: to provide fast rescue and medical care to injured firefighters.
But, as members of the team remember it, nobody really understood that.
“People were kind of like, ‘Really, do we need you here? It seems kind of overkill,’ ” Santa Fe Fire Department Lt. Graham Miller said.
The REM stuck around on the fire, helping with medical calls and firefighting, for about a week before officials sent the squad home.
Had the unit stayed around, the crew believes, it could have proved its worth.
According to an account from Wildland Fire Lessons Learned center, a federally funded group that publishes reports on fire incidents, a firefighter on the Coyote Fire backed into an agave plant and impaled his calf with one of the rigid, spiky leaves. The tip broke off in his leg, and he couldn’t move without severe pain.
Fire paramedics hiked up to the man as fast as they could but determined they couldn’t remove the spike. In the meantime, a storm was developing, and helicopters couldn’t pick up the firefighter. So the medical team packaged the man’s leg as best it could, numbed his pain and hiked out with him.
It took eight hours from the time the man was hurt to get him to an ambulance, according to the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned report.
The REM squad from Santa Fe believes it could have done it in far less time.
“When that happened, it basically came out that we were there, and we had all the equipment not only to treat him but to extract him,” said Craig Anstine, a Santa
Fe fire captain who helped start the REM. “People realized that, ‘Holy smokes, if those guys would have been there, we could have had this guy out in a quarter of the time.’
The Santa Fe REM team goes through rigid training — from ropes rescue courses to emergency medical training in wildland scenarios — to prepare to rescue those who rescue others from fire.
The REM members hope to set a standard for other groups across the country.
The first rapid-extraction teams were developed in California in 2012, according to a Wildland Fire Lessons Learned report. The model was inspired by tragedies like the 2008 Dutch Creek Fire in California, where a young firefighter died after being hit by a fallen tree. Miscommunication with helicopters delayed the time it took him to get to a hospital. When he got there more than three hours after being injured, he was pronounced dead from blood loss.
The California teams and tragedies like Dutch Creek were Anstine’s motivation to pitch a local team at the Santa Fe Fire Department.
His idea was to combine the capabilities of the department’s rescue and wildfire teams with insight from structural firefighting to create a REM that could help at wildfires.
The team is a rotating cast of Santa Fe Fire Department firefighters. There is at least one paramedic on the crew and one person who works as the team lead, coordinating the crew’s efforts with other fire resources.
When it’s called out to a fire, the group typically is stationed near the most dangerous part of the fire, said firefighter Zach Klose who has been out with the team numerous times. The team uses an off-road vehicle that can carry rescue and advanced life support equipment and reach remote areas much faster than an ambulance might be able to.
“It’s basically a mountain ambulance,” Klose said.
While “rapid” might be part of the crew’s name, that word is not synonymous with “rushed,” Klose said. As medical providers, their first priority is to stabilize patients and get their medical treatment going. They can transport patients to an ambulance or hook them up with helicopters.
The Santa Fe crew has responded to a dozen or so fires since 2016, some as far away as North Carolina, Washington and Oregon.
The REM members haven’t had to do any high-stakes rescues yet, they said. Mostly, their medical help has involved responding to minor things like sprained ankles and dehydration. But that’s OK with them. They train for the worst and hope for the best.
“It’s a resource you might not ever use on a fire,” said Greg Gallegos, Santa Fe Fire Department wildland superintendent. “But that’s probably a good thing.”
Because the concept of REM teams is new, they aren’t standardized when it comes to capabilities, said Alex Viktora, a U.S. Forest Service employee and assistant director of the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned center.
While some teams might have specialized training, like the folks in Santa Fe, other crews might not provide medical help and some might be two guys in a pickup with some ropes equipment, Viktora said.
“We’re kind of all over the board still,” he said.
This can cause confusion and create false expectations of what some REM teams can do, what kinds of rescues they’re capable of and what exactly “rapid” means. Other debates spring up, too, Viktora said, among them the question of whether firefighters should be going to areas so remote that regular rescue equipment can’t get to them.
As national fire agencies work to set the standards for REM groups, Anstine said, Santa Fe hopes to help set the bar high.
“Let’s make it the standard that everything goes right every time instead of leaving it to chance that we have a group of people who have the skills and work really well together,” Anstine said. “Let’s not have another Dutch Creek incident.”