Phoenix Fire station unveils new firefighting tool: A dry sauna
Mar 26, 2018, 2:37 PM
PHOENIX — A Phoenix fire station has a new firefighter tool. It’s not a saw, or an axe, or anything along those lines.
It’s a dry sauna.
“Cedar wood,” said Phoenix Fire Captain Rob McDade. “It gets up to about 140 degrees — basically like a personal sweat lodge.”
But the sauna is not a luxury. McDade said the heat opens pores and allows firefighters to get rid of toxins, smoke and soot that lands on their skin during fires.
Two firefighters can spend 15 minutes at a time in the sauna.
“You could smell that fire on you, even after multiple showers, a couple days later,” he said. “Folks are telling us now, at Fire Station 5, that they don’t smell those toxins the next day.”
In fact, McDade said, the sauna made it so that a firefighter’s two young sons couldn’t even tell their dad had been working.
“When he would go home, his young boys would give him a hug and say, ‘Oh, Dad! You had a fire – we can smell fire on you!'” he said. “Since they’ve installed the sauna, they’ve had working fires … and they haven’t smelled it on him.”
The firefighters at Fire Station 5, which was located near Cambridge Avenue and 17th Street, pooled their own money and bought the sauna used on Craigslist.
“We hope that we’re on the right track,” McDade said, “and maybe someday this will be in every fire station.”
