Drugs Pose Danger to Responding Firefighters: Branford Chief

By Jack Kramer

Correspondent

BRANFORD, CT – The heroin and opioid crisis that is plaguing the state of Connecticut isn’t just a danger to those taking the drugs. It is also a danger to those who are the first responders to the calls.

At the most recent meeting of the Board of Fire Commissioners in Branford, Fire Chief Thomas Mahoney and Assistant Chief Shaun Heffernan told the commissioners that they’ve been warning their personnel about reports of first responders becoming victimized by the potent drugs when responding to calls.

Heffernan said the problem is that the drugs today are “two and three times” more powerful than they were in the old days, and when you add in that heroin is not just shot up, but also ingested and snorted – that heroin and the fentanyl it is often mixed with gets airborne.

Once it gets airborne, Heffernan and Mahoney continued, it can be ingested into a system of a first responder, which happened to a first responder in a town in New York.

That responder wasn’t critically injured, Mahoney said, but he said he used the example as a reminder to his personnel to be careful.

“We can’t help you if we are unconscious,” said Mahoney.

Mahoney added that many departments now carry separate “Fire Department Only” cans of Narcan, an emergency treatment nasal spray used to revise those after drug overdoses, that are only for first responders.

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