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scriptmedic

COVID

Or, How to Stay Safe & Save the World at the Same Time

Hey all. Seems like it’s getting tough out there.

Seems like shit is getting really real, really fast.

I’m here in New York, doing ICU transfers for one of the hospital systems, and I can’t lie to you… it’s bad.

We’re storing bodies in refrigerated trailers because the morgues are full.

The City is reopening potter’s fields and digging mass graves.

Hundreds of people a day are dying. Soon, thousands.

Mostly older. Some previously-healthy adults. Mercifully, not many kids.

It’s real, and it’s bad.

But I promise you, the world is not ending.

And I also promise you this post will end with HOPE, even if it’s hard to read.

But I want to talk about something… a misconception I’ve been seeing over and over again.

Keep reading

scriptfirefighter

LISTEN TO THE DAMN MEDIC!

~529

OMFG I'm ready to cry tears of joy from finding this blog. Bless you. I'm writing a serial story with firefighter MCs but I don't know anything so there have been a loot of bumps in the road and this blog is really, really helping!

Hi there Nonners,

I’m so glad that I’ve been able to help. Always feel free to ask away, and I’ll see you on the fireground.

~529

Can you give me some idea of what size of village/town is likely to have a volunteer as opposed to full-time professional Fire Department? I realize it probably varies a lot based on location, tax-base, history, and lots of other factors, but a rough idea would give me a starting point for my world-building. Thanks so much for running this awesome blog!

Hello there!

So the short answer to this is that size is a factor, but it really boils down to tax base. Funding determines whether or not an agency can afford to hire and salary full-time staff. Some agencies depend on paid-on-call responders, while others use a mixed staffing model where there are full-time staff supplemented by volunteers, and some are entirely volunteer. You could have a small, but very wealthy, communnity whose tax base will support a full-time career department, while others of the same size could only afford to equip a volunteer department but not pay them. Of course, larger cities usually have the tax base to support full-time departmants for their fire protection services. However you could have a sparsely populated location (like a county) that can only support a small service.

Determine what the settting of your story will be and use that information to determine what resources that location could feasibly support. It would be just as strange to see a remote, rural county with full-time fire service agencies as it would be to see a large metropolitan city with only volunteers.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

hopephd

Seizure First Aid.

Learn it. Share it. Know it. Use it.

king-in-yellow

100% correct medical information on tumblr for once; also consider calling 911 if you don’t know how often the person has seizures and ESPECIALLY if the seizure has lasted 5 minutes or more (which is why the watch is critical)

lukesvalentine-blog1

I have epilepsy so making sure the word is out on how to help people who do have seizures means a lot to me.

karaidemon

Oh my god, accurate epilepsy information. I am so happy, you have no idea.

What’s the general hierarchy in a fire house? I know there’s the chief, but beyond that I have no idea.

Hi there nonners!

Generally the rank structure is as follows:

Chief

Assistant/Deputy Chief

Battalion/District Chief (Though a district chief may outrank a battalion chief in some departments)

Captain

Lieutenant

Senior Firefighter (Not always used)

Firefighter

This rank structure may vary from department to department but it generally falls somewhere in here. You could easily eliminate some of these for a smaller department and maintain realism.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529

Hello there! I have a part in my story where two friends are driving in the rain up in some hills and their car ends up sliding off the side of a cliff and comes to rest on it, with one getting pinned inside. How would a rescue go about in this situation?

Hi there @kasperaura,

In incidents like this, the first order of business if obviously to assess the general conditions of your patient from the outside of the vehicle. Typically there will also simultaneously be vehicle stabilization operations being conducted.

Once the vehicle is stabilized, rescuers being the two processes. The first is called disentanglement, which is essentially removing the car from the victim. This can take the form of anything as simple as removing a door to something as complex as lifting and rolling the entire dash of the vehicle upward. The second of the two processes is the more common of the two terms, extrication. That is, the removal of the patient from the vehicle.

Scenes of this nature can be extremely stressful for trapped victims for a number of reasons. They become blindingly bright, loud, and hectic very quickly which you can imagine is not a fun time for the disoriented and possibly injured person that’s trapped in the vehicle. This is what makes it so crucial to communicate everything that will occur to the victim both before and during the operation.

After the patient is extricated, EMS personnel will package the patient, and transport them to the nearest/most logical treatment facility where the people that get paid the big bucks (aka trauma docs with degrees and everything) will take over their care.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529

Hi! I'm working on (the very very very early stages of) a story which takes place in a particular city department. Do you have any advice on how to contact people within a department in order to get more information about what that department be like? Especially since I'm featuring queer characters in this story I feel it could be a touchy subject with some places. Thanks so much!

Hi, @dying-redshirt-noises,

This is a tough one to answer because every department’s policy is different on what facets of their operations they’re willing to divulge to the public. Your best bet is to try to get a hold of their public relations officer and go from there. Calling the department’s listed non-emergency line is usually a good place to start.

As always, thanks for asking, and I hope this helps.

~529

Hello! I'm trying to do research into search and rescue teams and everything to do with them; their modes of operation, their structure, their uniforms, their equipment, their typical behavior, etc. Can you recommend any reading? And do you know where I could get it? I looked up some of the NFPA codes and standards books, but I can't get access to any of the texts, and they only deal with firefighting s/r teams, right? Thank you for your help!

Hi there @letterbird,

So the NFPA does in fact deal with search and rescue and the training standards for them. I’d recommend doing some digging around inter-library loan systems for books and youtube for more information as, unfortunately, I am but a wee structural firefighter. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but I hope this points you in the right direction.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529

this is kind of more ethics. it's known the arsonist is also trapped with their victims, and the firefighters purposely ignore the arsonist to get to innocent victims first. time runs out and the arsonist dies along with several innocents. what happens? will they weigh it with if they had saved the arsonist, it would have meant that an innocent actually would not have gotten saved? or if it wouldn't have made a difference and the arsonist's death was just an extra avoidable death?

Hi there nonners,

So we would never ignore any person found downed in a fire for a number of reasons.

1) Our first responsibility is to protect life and property regardless of criminal status or lack there of.

2) Our job is not to presume the innocence or guilt of any person found in a fire.

3) We leave arson investigation and criminal sanction to arson investigators and law enforcement and the courts. It’s just not our job.

That being said, of course any death in a fire weighs on you. There will always be the thought in the back of your head about whether or not you did everything you could to save a person. If you follow your training the answer to that question should be yes.

As always, thanks for asking, and I hope this helps.

~529

Hey how's it going, I just found this page. I'm on newburgh volunteer fire department in southern Indiana. Thought I'd stop by and say hi and thanks for all the answers that runs through our minds keep up the good work

How do you create a fire resistant room? I have a character who has fire abilities and well, when he trains he doesn't want to burn his training room down. I'm thinking the size of 3 basketball courts and 2 stories high. The ceiling is also going to have fans to get rid of smoky air.

Hi there!

So this should be short and sweet. Metal sheathed concrete as far as the eye can see, that’s about it.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

Hi! New to the script family and I was wondering: if there was an explosion inside a building, what are some things I can use in a story to make it credible? Not like a bomb or anything like that but more things that would be laying around in an average building i.e. Gas tank for a stove, etc. also, how big would those blasts be? I'm thinking more along the lines of a big apartment building in an inner city. Thanks so much appreciate all the time you put into these asks!

Hi there, and welcome to the family!

Generally speaking, fires don’t reach that size very often. When they do its often due to a combination of factors. Namely the building construction style (wood frame, heavy timber, fire resistant, etc.), fire load in the building (filled with books? concrete parts? Flammable chemicals?), ventilation (open windows/doors and the like). In addition, a fire of that size would take time to develop, but of course good ventilation would help it along.

In your case, It would be pretty difficult to get a modern apartment building to burn beyond what’s known as a room and contents fire because of the way they’re constructed. Your best bet would probably be an electrical fire in a pre-1950 apartment complex.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

Hi! First, your blog is amazing, thank you! Second, I've noticed that abandoned fire stations, police stations, etc. are common places for groups of characters to set up base. Is this even realistic? What's the actual possibility of the local fire station/police station/whatever being abandoned and/or possible for characters to use?

Hello there!

This is actually a pretty common thing, for one cities often have no use for old fire stations after they’ve moved to a new building so sometimes they sit for a long time unused. Cities will also often sell the unused buildings, this happened pretty recently near me and the building was sold to be used as an art studio by the local university so that’s not at all a far fetched scenario.

However, if the station was simply unused and vacant but still owned by the municipality, it introduces an entirely new conundrum. How does one illegally enter and occupy a government owned facility without being noticed?

Your best bet is to have your characters somehow acquire the building through legal means and then use it to their heart’s content.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

do spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends ever drop by the station? do you ever meet the families of your fellow firefighters?

Hi there nonners,We're all a big family at the house, including the actual families of our brothers in fire. Its pretty common for us to hang out in our off hours and for families to drop by the station just to visit or even better, with treats.Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps. ~529

Houston...We had a problem.

Hello Everyone!

Due to some unforseen technical issues I’ve been out of commission on Tumblr for some time now. But I’m back and ready to go. For those of you who have already submitted asks, I did not forget about you and your answers are coming soon! For everyone else, please be patient as I temporarily close the ask box to clear the backlog of asks. Thanks for hanging around and as always, I hope to help!

~529

Hi! In my story (D&Dish medieval fantasy type thing), one of my characters' tents gets set on fire. How fast would it burn? Would anything inside it be salvageable?

Hi there nonners!

So, the speed at which a tent would burn depends entirely on the material that it was constructed of. You have several options from that time period, including but not limited to: wool, leather, silk, and linen.

In terms of fire resistance, leather would be your best bet. In fact, you would have an easier time burning the items inside the tent than the tent itself.

After leather, comes wool. Wool DOES NOT like to burn at all, it has a tendency to smolder and then go out a opposed to actually igniting.

Silk has a tendency to melt as opposed to burning, and it doesn’t really want to light.

Last, there’s linen. Linen WILL burn, and it will burn fast. However, because of the speed with which it burns, it wouldn’t do a whole lot of damage.

Overall, because of how thin the fabrics used to construct tents, as well as their various flammabilities, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the contents of your tent came out okay, if a little smoky.

As always, thanks for asking an I hope this helps!

Do firefighters and other rescue personnel usually track and record time on a twenty-four hour clock like nurses and doctors do (e.g. 2:15PM is 14:15), or a twelve hour clock differentiated by AM and PM?

Hello there @b0bth3w0nd3rchick3n,

We tend to work on a 24 hour clock, aka military time.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

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