EmergencyTech.org

Hey, I know that there are readers out there from a number of disciplines who work in all kinds of settings and I’m putting put a call for anyone who wouldn’t mind telling us a bit about what you carry around with you all day. Shoot me an email at tips (SPLAT) emergencytech () org and we’ll work out the details!

Thanks!

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Years ago I was fortunate enough to attend one of the first CONTOMS tactical medic classes in Bethesda, MD. Everything about the class was amazing and, surprisingly, the stuff that stuck with me the longest was some of the training that seemed most mundane at the time. Since the course, I’ve used skills learned there to treat a broken tooth, manage hydration, and even store pee in a ziploc bag.

You see, in CONTOMS they taught us that the best way to store urine is to put some silica gel (that stuff that comes in packages) in a ziploc bag. When you urinate into the bag, the gel solidifies the urine and you can store it for later disposal. This is invaluable when you’re on a long deployment and can’t just sneak off into the bushes to do your business.

A German company has developed a commercial version of this idea with their new roadbag device. Designed for long car trips (as far as can be gleaned from the Google translation), perfect for long hours spent at a corner post with no bathroom (as nearly every EMT understands) this is exactly what every EMT-T should have come up with during class.

Via Medgaget.

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Pretty intimidating, huh? This is the XREP or eXtended Range Electronic Projectile. Fired from a standard 12ga. shotgun, the XREP offers stand-off distance capability. Once the projectile strikes the target it releases a 20 second (GAH!) burst of electricity.

As David Hambling points out, this weapon raises a lot of questions about where it fits within the force continuum, although I’m sure a few departments will whip together a policy and start sending big, fat Homeland Security Grant checks ASAP.

At present, less-lethals are seen as a supplement to lethal weapons. XREP might see the start of less-lethals being used as an alternative. In the example of room clearance — where insurgents, civilians, or friendly troops can be around the next corner — a shotgun round like XREP can mean the difference between firing first and getting shot. And it means that accidental shootings are a matter of apologizing to the victim rather than burying them.

On the civilian front, there is also the question of how dangerous such rounds are. Getting hit by XREP is not like getting hit by Taser darts. Rick Smith, Taser’s CEO says describes it as “delivering blunt impact similar to other impact rounds” – presumably he means the ‘bean bag’ nonlethal rounds fired from shotguns. These will bruise and can break ribs and cause other injuries; when Baton Rouge Police Department introduced them in 2005 for use against violent suspects, their press release said that “The bean bag round is designed to cause injuries in order to save lives.”

He also raises some interesting questions about the eventual transition of this technology into the civilian world. Will we be safer when criminals start using stun bullets loaded into shotguns?

At first XREP and its competitors and imitators will be confined to the police and military. But, like Tasers, they will branch out into the civilian world. Home defense will be a lot safer with non-lethal projectiles. And what about armed robbers? Are we going to do everything to stop them from getting hold of electric bullets…or would it actually be a step forward if they routinely used stun bullets rather than lethal ones? Should sentencing reflect this?

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After 9/11 workers were exposed to all manner of toxins. During the recovery even those well away from Ground Zero, those who were working on mortuary details for example, were exposed to unsafe levels of Asbestos.

In March of last year, New York City paramedic Deborah Reeve died of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related form of cancer. There is little doubt she was first exposed to asbestos on Sept. 11, 2001, when she responded to the scene at Ground Zero.

There is equally little doubt that she continued to be assaulted by the substance sometime during the next eight months when she was assigned to the morgue, where she helped medical examiners do body-part identification.

Dr. Emily Craig, Kentucky’s forensic anthropologist, had already given a lot of thought to the problem of contaminated corpses before the World Trade Center was attacked. But she stood endless days in the same morgue as Deborah Reeve. She breathed the same air while combing bags of rubble for slivers of bones so that DNA could name what remained.

“Ziplock-like” body bag technology developed by Dr. Craig attempts to address the issue of cross contamination from handling remains.

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