19 hours ago
Wildfire Fighters, Unmasked in Toxic Smoke, Are Getting Sick and Dying
The smoke from the wildfires that burned through Los Angeles in January smelled like plastic and was so thick that it hid the ocean. Firefighters who responded developed instant migraines, coughed up black goo and dropped to their knees, vomiting and dizzy.
Seven months later, some are still jolted awake by wheezing fits in the middle of the night. One damaged his vocal cords so badly that his young son says he sounds like a supervillain. Another used to run a six-minute mile and now struggles to run at all.
Fernando Allende, a 33-year-old whose U.S. Forest Service crew was among the first on the ground, figured he would bounce back from his nagging cough. But in June, while fighting another fire, he suddenly couldn't breathe. At the hospital, doctors discovered blood clots in his lungs and a mass pressing on his heart. They gave him a diagnosis usually seen in much older people: non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an aggressive cancer.
It would be unthinkable for urban firefighters — those American icons who loom large in the public imagination — to enter a burning building without wearing a mask. But across the country, tens of thousands of people who fight wildfires spend weeks working in toxic smoke and ash wearing only a cloth bandanna, or nothing at all.
Wildfire crews were once seasonal laborers who fit in deployments between other jobs. They might have experienced only a few bad smoke days a year and had the winter and spring to recover. Now, as the United States sees more drought and extreme heat, forest fires are starting earlier in the year, burning longer and expanding further. Firefighters often work almost year-round.
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