What's News?

By First Assistant Chief Siminski

Wednesday July 30, 2025

While enjoying these hot summer days it’s important to cool down and stay hydrated. Our firefighters are no exception, heat exhaustion and heat stroke are very real and dangerous conditions that we need to manage. At our last Monday night drill the Chaffee-Sardinia Fire Co  members were hard at work practicing the basics of proactive cooling, hydration and taking vitals in a process the fire service calls Rehab. 

During the performance of our duties we are required to wear insulated/thermally protective clothing to shield us from the heat of a blaze. This insulation also traps all body heat. During moderate to heavy work the body heats up to dangerous levels. The summer heat and humidity only adds to the rise in body temperature. After a designated work cycle our firefighters are required to remove their protective clothing, drink some water or sports drink, and rest before returning to work, to ensure their health and safety. 

At the same time we also practiced how to handle a firefighter who may have a medical emergency, like cardiac arrest, while wearing all these layers of protective clothing and equipment. The goal here is to provide effective CPR compressions quickly and to remove the protective clothing fast, without interrupting compressions. We call this RIT CPR, or Rapid Intervention Team, Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation. These skills have to be done in a certain sequence to provide smooth and fast life saving interventions, and we all rotated through the different skills positions for a well-rounded experience. 

Our third activity for the evening was Gross Decontamination setup and procedure. As you may have read in our previous article, firefighters are at an increased risk of job-related cancer. We strive to make every effort to reduce contamination and cancer risk and the New York State OFPC recommended decon process is what we follow. This process removes 85% of carcinogenic contaminants from products of combustion that may be on our clothes with a simple solution of mild detergent, some light scrubbing and a good rinse down with clean water. Everyone enjoyed setting up and running the decon line, and a little water war with the hoses, after a very productive drill. 

All these steps are important to our members' short-term and long-term health and wellness. We appreciate the community's support to help us provide professional emergency services to the great people of our town and surrounding towns. But we can't do it alone! If you're interested in serving your community with a sense of pride, honor and professionalism we would love to welcome YOU as our newest member! Please see our Volunteer page for more details and info about how to join.