From the medical side, exertion and labor increase cardiac workload and oxygen demand, and increased blood flow can cause clots to break free and occlude coronary arteries. Both can lead to or worsen ischemia and cause death. Major stroke also possible, not many details on his last moments obviously. AAA is another possibility but people usually know that’s happening and can’t ignore it the way people seem to ignore “a little chest pain” or “just a headache”.
Additionally, smoke exposure in the wildland environment is a risk factor for CAD, and firefighters in general are at a 500% increased risk for heart attack. Average age for a firefighter to have one is 49, rest of the population is age 66.
I get what you’re saying; he didn’t get crushed by a tree or rock, didn’t get burned over. But it did come from a hazard of the job while doing the job.
Not only that, but all the release says is that the firefighter suffered a “cardiac emergency,” not that it was a heart attack. Heart attack isn’t necessarily a terrible assumption to make, but theoretically it could have been commotio cordis caused by impact to the chest from any number of things or some other cardiac condition that could, even by this guy’s strict definition, be directly related to fire suppression duties and therefore a LODD.
One happened on the clock during performance of duties. Duties which increase cardiovascular load.
The other happened in a tent, presumably off the clock.
That’s the difference.
Maybe if the FF was sitting in an office chair in a command trailer and had a heart attack, yeah that’s not really line of duty directly. But if someone’s duties increase strain on the heart and blood vessels and they have a fatal cardiovascular emergency while doing those duties, I would say it is in the line of duty. If your duties include driving and you’re driving a g-ride and get t-boned, I still call that LODD because otherwise you wouldn’t be driving in that place, at that time, and on that day and you would still be alive. Cops that get hit by random drivers are considered LODD for that reason.
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u/[deleted] 6d ago
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