Heat Stress in Forest Fires : Analyzed of Firefighting Activities on Hearing Survey

A survey on forest fires has been carried out following a previous survey on wooden house fires. The purpose of this survey is to grasp the using condition of fire protective clothing in firefighting activities from the viewpoint of the heat-incurred stress of wearers, in the same way as the previous survey. The feature of a forest fire is difficulty in firefighting activities, which requires a large amount of exercises due to movement in large areas including slopes. Since a firefighter wears protective clothing in fire fighting activities, he/she receives a large amount of heat-incurred stress especially in a hot season. For grasping actual situations in forest fires, this research conducted a hearing survey on firefighters who had engaged in firefighting activities in actual forest fires. Using the survey results, the authors drew up an action scenario for a firefighter and analyzed required working hours and working volume based on it. The results show that in forest fires, which require longer working time than thafrin wooden house fires, difficulty in constantly wearing protective clothing has been found from the viewpoint of the body temperature adjusting function of a human. Actually, the fact that few firefighters were wearing protective clothing has been revealed