Donation Meant to Help Firefighters Chill Out

Clearwater, FL — Clearwater firefighters have a new way to chill out when heat related to their jobs becomes too much for their bodies to handle.

Benjamin Kugler donated one of his Polar Breeze body-cooling machines to the agency on Wednesday. The $5,000 device is meant to help firefighters “keep their cool in what is many times an excruciatingly hot job,” the agency wrote in an email to media.

The Polar Breeze is a combination of an air conditioning unit and a mini-refrigerator. It pumps cold air through a hose into a firefighter’s hood. This enables the firefighter to inhale cold air directly into the lungs.

Sign up for the Clearwater Patch newsletter and alerts!

When used, the Polar Breeze can lower body temperature one degree every two minutes, fire rescue said.

“There’s nothing that can do it that fast,” Kugler said in a statement. “That’s what is so remarkable about this machine. There is nothing like it.”

Chief Robert Weiss seems to agree.

“Nothing will cool our firefighters as fast as this can,” Weiss said. “It’s extremely important. The biggest thing we face as firefighters is heat exhaustion.”

Clearwater recently had one of its firefighters taken to a hospital after a four-alarm fire broke out at the Largo Walmart. The heat and humidity took a toll, officials said. Two other firefighters from surrounding agencies also suffered heat exhaustion while battling the blaze.

For more information about Polar Breeze, visit the Clearwater company’s website.

Photo courtesy of Clearwater Fire & Rescue