Archive for January 25th, 2019

Mount Prospect Fire Department news

Jan 25

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | 1 Comment

In 2018, Mount Prospect experienced 25 cardiac arrest incidents. Of those, 18 were pronounced dead at the scene, seven were taken to a hospital where six patients recovered and one passed away.

Mount Prospect Fire Chief Brian Lambel presented the PulsePoint app to the village board Committee of the Whole meeting. The app, which has been used in Naperville for the past three years, allows volunteers trained in CPR and/or to use an automatic external defibrillator (AED) to register for an alert if there is a cardiac arrest event reported nearby.

The 911 system connects with the app and sends an alert to the mobile phones of volunteers who are within a quarter mile of the victim’s location. The app will also advise where the nearest public AED is located. Emphasizing that his investigation and consideration of PulsePoint is in the preliminary stages, Lambel said it will cost $10,000 to implement with an annual subscription fee of either $8,000 or $13,000.

The fire department is part of the Northwest Central Dispatch (NWCD) system which dispatches 11 fire departments. If they will embrace the program, the costs would be shared by all 11 communities.

If Mount Prospect were to join the PulsePoint program alone, the village would bear the entire implementation fee and the annual subscription fee, which would be reduced to $8,000, the price for communities of under 300,000 residents.

Lambel assured the board there would be after-action surveys that go out, “If it doesn’t work or there are problems we either fix the problem or get rid of the app.”

“3,300 communities in 42 states already have PulsePoint,” Lambel said. Rapid City, SD, is a town slightly larger than Mount Prospect and is reporting that 85% of cardiac incidents are getting early CPR with a reported 45% survival rate.

Tags: Fire Chief Brian Lambel, fire department considers use of PulsePoint app, Mount Prospect Fire Chief Brian Lambel, Mount Prospect FIre Department, PulsePoint app, PulsePoint Respond app

Commercial fire in Palatine, 1-25-19 (more)

Jan 25

Posted by Admin in Fire Department News | Comments off

Tags: fire at Dirty Nellies in Palatine, Palatine FD Press Release, Palatine Fire Department press release

Commercial fire in Palatine, 1-25-19

Jan 25

Posted by Admin in Apparatus on-scene, Fire Scene photos | 2 Comments

Palatine, Palatine Rural, and Rolling Meadows firefighters responded to a reported kitchen fire at Durty Nellies at 180 Smith Street in Palatine Friday morning.

kitchen fire at Durty Nellies at 180 Smith Street in Palatine

Tim McLaughlin photo

Excerpts from the NWHerald.com:

According to Palatine Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Gratzianna, the fire department received an activated fire alarm at approximately 10:17 a.m. and crews were on scene six minutes later. “Police arrived first and notified us they had visual flames and smoke, so we bumped up the call to a Code 4” he said.

Crews extended a hose line into the kitchen’s hood, grill and duct area, but gas was feeding the fire. Nicor crews arrived and shut off gas to the building, and the remaining fire quickly went out.

Larry Shapiro photo

[Show slideshow]

Tags: fire at Dirty Nellies in Palatine, fire scene photos, Palatine Deputy Fire Chief Patrick Gratzianna, Palatine FD Ambulance 84, Palatine FD Battalion 8, palatine FD Engine 82, Palatine Fire Department, Palatine Rural FPD Engine 36, Rolling Meadows FD Engine 16, Tim McLaughlin

MVA with entrapment and medevac in Northbrook, 1-17-19 (more)

Jan 25

Posted by Admin in Crash scene photos | Comments off

Excerpts from wgntv.com:

Frank Visconti and a friend were heading to the hospital last week for blood work. They were southbound on I-294 near Willow Road when just a few feet in front of them, they saw debris flying and traffic come to a halt. As he drove by the crash, he felt compelled to pull over and aid a woman who some thought was dead. The car driven by Kim Huguelet slammed into the back of the semi and trapped her inside.

“To see the vehicle and the condition it was in, I thought maybe it was going to be a fatality,” Visconti said. “But when she looked up at me, that was it.”

Visconti, a former a paid on-call firefighter in Knollwood, used his training from years ago.

“I just crawled into the vehicle and started pulling pieces of the dashboard off of her,” he said. “I observed her head had a really big cut and I just put pressure on her head and stopped the bleeding as much as I could.

Visconti continued to talk to Huguelet and tried to keep her calm and awake until the fire department.

Huguelet is recovering at Lutheran General Hospital and Visconti visits regularly, calls daily, and expects to throw a big party for her when she recovers.

Her family said she’s not out of the woods yet. She’s had a couple of surgeries. They are hopeful, but doctors are taking it day by day. They wanted to bring attention to Visconti ‘s heroic actions.

thanks Evan

Tags: chicagoareafire.com, crash with entrapment in Northbrook, Frank Visconti

Cancer in the Fire Service

Jan 25

Posted by Admin in Cancer in the fire service | Comments off

Excerpts from Richmond.com:

Retired Richmond (VA) Fire Marshal David Creasy, who died in October after more than four years battling cancer, was represented in the annual legislative battle to extend workers’ compensation benefits automatically to firefighters and other emergency personnel stricken by certain forms of cancer they say are caused by exposure to toxic chemicals in the line of duty.

Colon cancer is among three forms of the disease that would be presumed eligible for workers’ compensation under Senate Bill 1030. The bill also adds cancer of the brain and testicles to the list of diseases presumed eligible for compensation under the program.

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) agreed last month to study the workers’ compensation program, including the presumption in the law that shifts the burden of proof to the state in determining whether a listed disease is related to work.

The Finance Committee ultimately approved the bill on a 14-2 vote but opponents representing local governments, insurers and major employers urged the committee to wait for the JLARC study.

“Please allow the study to go forward before you enact legislation such as this,” said a lobbyist for the Virginia Self-Insurers Association and Metis Services Inc., a risk-control firm for employers.

But some senators said they’ve waited long enough to address a long-standing concern for firefighters and other public safety employees. The bill survived a motion to kill the bill, which died on a 7-9 vote, and a motion to amend the measure so it would not become law unless the budget includes money to pay for what the state estimates would be indeterminate costs. The proposed amendment failed on an 8-8 tie.

However, the committee killed a similar bill to extend workers’ compensation benefits to police and other public safety employees suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of events they witness in the line of duty, including the death or serious injury of a co-worker. Instead, that issue will become part of the pending JLARC study.

Firefighters earn the benefit of workers’ compensation through their repeated exposure to toxins they believe cause cancer, including the kind that killed Creasy.