Firefighters in COVID hot zones now ‘pump more oxygen than water’

As a boy, Robert Weber chased the lights and sirens of fire engines down the streets of Brooklyn.

He hung out at the Engine 247 firehouse, eating ham heroes with extra mayonnaise and “learning everything about everything to be the best firefighter in the world,” said his wife Danielle Weber, who grew up next door.

They got married in their 20s and settled in Port Monmouth, New Jersey, where Weber joined the ranks of the more than one million firefighters America calls upon when stovetops, factory floors and forest canopies burst into flames.

Weber was ready for any emergency, his wife said. Then, COVID-19 swept through.

Firefighters like Weber are often the first on the scene following a 911 call. Many are trained as emergency medical technicians and paramedics, responsible for stabilizing and transporting those in distress to the hospital. But, with the pandemic, even those not medically trained are suddenly at high risk of coronavirus infection.

Firefighters have not been commonly counted among the ranks of front-line health care workers getting infected on the job. KHN and The Guardian are investigating 1,500 such deaths in the pandemic, including nearly 100 firefighters.

In normal times, firefighters respond to 36 million medical calls a year nationally, according to Gary Ludwig, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. That role has only grown in 2020.

“These days, we pump more oxygen than water,” Ludwig said.

In mid-March, Weber told his wife he noticed a new pattern in the emergency calls: people with sky-high temperatures, burning lungs and searing leg pain.

Within a week, Weber’s fever ignited, too.

Snohomish County, Washington — just north of Seattle — reported the first confirmed U.S. coronavirus case on Jan. 20. Within days, fire departments in the area “went straight into high gear,” Lt. Brian Wallace said.

Within weeks, the Seattle paramedic said, his crew had responded to scores of COVID-19 emergencies. In the ensuing months, the crew stood up the city’s testing sites “out of thin air,” Wallace said.

Since June, teams of firefighters have performed over 125,000 tests, a critical service in a city where more than 25,000 residents had tested positive as of late October.

Wallace calls his team a “public health workforce that’s stepped up.”

Firefighters elsewhere did, too. In Phoenix’s Maricopa County, which is still notching new peaks in coronavirus cases, firefighters receive dozens of emergency calls every shift for symptoms related to the virus. Since March, firefighters have registered over 3,000 known exposures.

But “that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Capt. Scott Douglas, the Phoenix Fire Department’s public information officer. “This job isn’t just meatball subs and football anymore.”

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In Washington, D.C. — with over 24,000 COVID-19 cases tallied since March — firefighters have been exposed in at least 3,000 incidents, said Dr. Robert Holman, medical director of the city’s fire department.

They’ve helped in other ways, too: Firefighters like Oluwafunmike Omasere, who serves in the city’s poverty-stricken Anacostia neighborhood, have bridged “all the other social gaps that are killing people.” They’ve fed people, distributed clothes and offered public health education about the virus.

“If it weren’t for us,” Omasere said, “I’m not sure who’d be there for these communities.”

Washington, D.C. Fire and EMS

For the more than 200 million Americans living in rural areas, one fire engine might cover miles and miles of land.

Case in point: the miles surrounding Dakota City, Nebraska. That’s steak country, home to one of the country’s largest meat-processing plants, owned by Tyson Foods. It’s on Patrick Moore, the town’s first assistant fire chief, to ensure that the plant’s 4,300 employees and their neighbors stay safe. The firehouse has a proud history, including, in 1929, buying the town’s first motorcar: a flame-red Model A.

“We made a promise to this community that we’d take care of them,” Moore said.

COVID-19 has tested that promise. By the time 669 employees tested positive at Tyson’s plant on April 30, the number of calls to the firehouse had quadrupled, coming from all corners of its 70-square-mile jurisdiction.

“It all snowballed so bad so fast,” Moore said.

Resources of all kinds — linens, masks, sanitizer — evaporated in Dakota City.

“We’ve been on our own,” Moore said.

Ludwig, of the fire chiefs association, said firefighters have ranked low on the priority list for emergency equipment shipped from the Strategic National Stockpile. As stand-ins for “the real stuff,” firehouses have cobbled together ponchos, raincoats and bandannas.

“But we all know these don’t do a damn thing,” he said.

International Association of Fire Chiefs

In May, Ludwig sent a letter to Congress to request additional emergency funding, resources and testing to support the efforts of firehouses. He’s been lobbying in D.C. ever since. Months later, the efforts haven’t amounted to much.

“We’re at the tip of the spear, yet we’re going in completely unarmed,” Ludwig said, calling the situation “disastrous.”

As of Dec. 9, more than 29,000 of the International Association of Fire Fighters’ 320,000 members were reported to have been exposed to the virus on the job. Many were unable to get tested, said Tim Burn, the union’s press secretary. Of those who did, 3,812 tested positive; 21 have died.

In Dakota City, Moore got it from a man found unconscious in his bathtub. The man’s son told the crew he was “clean.” Yet three days later, Moore got a call: The man had tested positive.

Within days, Moore’s energy level sunk “somewhere between nothing and zero.” He was hospitalized in early June, recovered and was back on emergency calls by the Fourth of July. He couldn’t stand for long, so he took on the role of driver. Moore said he’s still not at full strength.

As the virus has pummeled the Great Plains, calls to Moore’s department are up nearly 70% since September. Only a handful of his staff still are making ambulance runs, and most have gotten sick themselves.

“We’re holding down the fort,” he said, “but it ain’t easy.”

It’s the same story inside firehouses across the nation:

• In Idaho’s Sun Valley, Chief Taan Robrahn — and one-fifth of his company — contracted COVID-19 after a ski convention.
• In New Orleans, Aaron Mischler, associate president of the city’s firefighters union, got it during Mardi Gras — as did 10% of the department.
• In Naples, Florida, almost 25% of Chief Peter DiMaria’s members got it.
• Collectively, in Washington, D.C., Houston and Phoenix, over 500 firefighters tested positive — and an additional 3,500 were forced into quarantine.

Quarantining, of course, can put loved ones at risk, too: Robrahn’s wife and their 3-year-old twins got it.

“Mercifully,” Robrahn said, the family recovered.

DiMaria, whose 18-year-old has a heart defect, has been spared so far. But after Big Tony, a close colleague under his command, died of COVID-19 — and after spending months resuscitating people with heart attacks and respiratory distress induced by the virus — he’s as concerned as ever.

“For the first time in my life,” DiMaria said, “I questioned my career choice.”

The distress of these emergency calls resounds in gasps, wailing, tears.

Some departments — including Houston and Dakota City — have taken on another burden: removing the bodies of those killed by the virus.

“You can’t unsee this stuff,” said Samuel Peña, chief of Houston’s department. “The emotional toll, it weighs heavy on all of us.”

Houston Fire Department

Now enduring a second surge, “We’re battle-weary,” Peña said, “but there’s no end in sight.”

Meanwhile, Mischler said, tax revenue is plummeting, forcing budget cuts, layoffs and hiring freezes “at the very moment we need the reinforcements more than ever.”

And in the volunteer departments, which constitute 67% of the national fire workforce, recruitment pipelines are running dry.

So people like Robert Weber filled the gaps on nights and weekends, which for the New Jersey firefighter proved disastrous.

On March 26, the day after his fever rose, Weber was hospitalized. On April 15, his wife got a call: Come immediately, the doctor said.

Weber died before she pulled in to the hospital parking lot.

Daniellle Weber

This story is part of “Lost on the Frontline,” an ongoing project from The Guardian and Kaiser Health News that aims to document the lives of health care workers who die from COVID-19. If you have a colleague or loved one to include, please share their story at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/13/lost-on-the-frontline-us-healthcare-coronavirus-deaths