Couple this with the research done on heat stress related issues when wearing full PPE and you're behind the 8 ball immediately with the core temperature rising quite dramatically and to dangerous levels.
This is so true. Especially with the sleep. My man has already went to bed and in the middle of the night was getting dressed saying we had an accident. I never heard the pager go off and I never heard it come on the scanner. I told him there was no accident , he crawled back in bed and the next morning he did not remember doing this. His sleep does suffer because the fire company is always on his mind.
I seen this. Its a very good report and something for us all to think about. Not just the full time crews but also the vollies. It's not a good thing when you go from zero to sixty in 2 seconds. Our bodies weren't made for this kind of stress.
Hopefully new technologies such as the FIT-5 can help reduce stress on the firefighter. Half an inanimate object take care most of it for you and then make your attack.
This is a verry scary situation. I know some companies are starting to implment a FF Fitness program, to help keep their personel conditioned. But the fact still remains that everyone reacts differently to every situation, and its only a matter of how people can take measures to keep themselves calm in stressfull situations