Heating season starts now — carbon monoxide, wet leaves and short daylight are back on your runs
The turn into late October brings the hazards that ride with cold mornings and the first furnace of the year.
Heating appliances are coming on across your district this week. That means carbon monoxide calls climb from here through winter, and the early ones are the quiet ones — a nagging headache, nausea, a "flu" that lifts when the occupant leaves the house. Treat the pattern, not just the alarm. A CO call with occupants still inside is a working incident, not a check-the-detector run. Carry your meter in, not just to the door.
Mornings are now at or near the first frost for much of the mid-latitudes. Frost on decking, ramps and apparatus steps is a slip hazard before the sun is up, and it is on the patient's path as well as yours. Wet, fallen leaves over road markings cut traction as hard as light ice and hide the lane. Expect more single-vehicle run-offs on rural bends and more pedestrian strikes at dusk.
Daylight is the one that creeps up on crews. Sunset is early and getting earlier, so scenes you worked in daylight in September are now dark jobs. Light your scene deliberately — scene lighting, traffic cones and high-visibility kit go out every time now, not just at night calls, because the call that starts in daylight finishes in the dark.
The season's first cold snap or early snow can arrive with little warning this far into October. Check your own agency's local forecast each shift rather than trusting last week's pattern; conditions turn fast at this time of year.
What this means for your shift: run CO calls as medical calls, light every scene as if it is dark, slow your approach on leaf-covered and frosted roads, and start each tour by reading the local forecast for your own ground. The hazards here are ordinary. That is exactly why they catch people.
