I just read the article linked below. It discusses some heat casualties at a high school following a bomb threat evacuation. Please take two minutes to read the article before you move on to my commentary.
21 students hospitalized, 3 critical, after standing in heat during bomb threat evacuation
For those of you who are too time pressed to read the article, I can summarize it by saying that at about 10:00 am a couple days ago, staff members of a junior high school in Tennessee received a note alleging that a bomb had been placed in the school. As is typical for most schools in this country, they chose to evacuate the school for the students’ safety and to allow first responders to “clear” the school of any potential explosive devices.
It’s summer time and it’s hot in Tennessee. The students were evacuated to a outdoor football stadium that had no significant shade. The students were sitting outside on the stadium bleachers for between 50 and 55 minutes. Twenty-one of the students had to be hospitalized for heat exhaustion/heat stroke. Three of those students are in critical condition.
I know Tennessee has a fairly warm climate, but it isn’t the Sahara desert. Am I out of line to expect that students should be able to sit outside for less than an hour at 10:00 am without becoming serious heat casualties?
I played football in high school. At the end of the summer, we had “two a day” full contact practices out in the hot sun while wearing heavy pads. Two practices a day with a short lunch break. We were playing football out in the hot summer sun for 5-6 hours a day while wearing incredibly hot shoulder pads and helmets. I can’t remember ever seeing a heat casualty on my football team.
How have we gone from expecting kids to play outside all day in the summer to having to hospitalize students for spending an hour sitting down outside without air conditioning?
I don’t know the answer, but it’s becoming a huge issue. People no longer spend time outside during the heat of the summer. When they are forced to be outside in the sun, they drop like flies.
I’ve been noticing heat casualties becoming far more common in the classes I’ve taught in the last few years. Until around 2020, I could count on one hand the number of total heat casualties my students had in the first 20 years I taught. Now it’s not uncommon to have at least one heat casualty in every summer outdoor class I teach. I think this problem is caused by a combination of factors:
Lack of Acclimation- Most people simple don’t spend time outside any more. They are not acclimated to the heat when they move from air conditioned house to air conditioned car, to air conditioned office without ever exposing themselves to heat and humidity.
Poor physical conditioning- People aren’t used to hard work. A high percentage of Americans are obese and do zero exercise. The heat hits those folks even harder.
More drugs- Take a look at this list on the CDC’s website. It lists all the drugs (both prescription and OTC) that cause body temperatures to increase. Take a look at the list:
- Antidepressants
- Antipsychotics
- Beta blockers
- Antihistamines and decongestants
- Amphetamines
- Diuretics
What percentage of the population is taking one or more of these drugs as compared to 30 years ago?
Why should you care about this? A lot of my readers are instructors. Even more take outdoor shooting classes in the summer. No matter if you are the teacher or the student, you don’t want to be a heat casualty.
All my instructor friends carry tourniquets and trauma equipment on their person or placed near the firing line. That’s awesome. Unfortunately, your tourniquet won’t help a student with heat stroke. Do you know to handle any heat emergencies your students may experience? You should.
As an instructor, you are vulnerable to heat injuries as well. What are you doing to prevent falling out in front of your shooting classes? I’m doing my students a disservice if I have to cancel a class in the middle of the day because I’m in the hospital soaking in an ice bath.
You instructors should be aware of the drugs I listed above. If you can safely avoid taking them when you are going to spend time outside in the summer, you should probably do so.
You should also acclimate yourself to the heat. Since my knee injury, I don’t do much running anymore. My cardio consists of ruck walks or long hikes. I intentionally choose to do this part of my workout every day between 3pm and 6pm when temperatures are the hottest. If I can hike for two to three hours outside in the hottest part of the Texas summer, hanging out on the outdoor shooting range becomes far less challenging. Are you acclimating yourself to the heat in a similar manner? You should be.
The second issue that this incident highlights is evacuating during bomb threats. School administrators often have a blanket “evacuation” policy for all bomb threats. That’s poor practice. I strongly believe that most bomb threats directed at schools or businesses should NOT prompt an evacuation. I explain the logic behind this opinion in my article titled Bomb Threats.
To summarize that article, almost all bomb threats are hoaxes. It’s fairly difficult to place a large bomb in a school without someone noticing it. It’s far easier to place the bomb in a car in the parking lot evacuation site or in a trash can at the high school football field that the administrators deem “safe.”
If I was a bomber and I knew that it was school policy to evacuate on all bomb threats, I would place the bomb at the known evacuation site and call in the threat. With that strategy, I am bringing my victims to the bomb rather than potentially getting caught taking the bomb inside to the victims. Which strategy is likely to cause more casualties?
In my view (and the views of the dozens of bomb experts I’ve trained with), mandatory evacuation leads to more potential harm than not evacuating. Given the information they made public about this incident, I do not think that evacuation was the best response in the case I linked to above.
Those kids probably shouldn’t have been outside in the heat in the first place.
I don’t often get to write an article combining strategies of mitigating danger from both heat injuries and bombs at the same time, but it seems to be necessary information to share.
You instructors should be acclimating yourselves to the heat and should be prepared to provide immediate medical care to any of your students with heat injuries. You cops and school administrators need to update your bomb threat policies to adequately reflect current best practices.
Terrorists and school shooters aren’t the only threats we should be preparing for. Please share this info with anyone who might consider it valuable.