Should the NFL change it's cold weather game policy?
doubledragon
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Sad news for several Kansas City Chiefs football fans who attended the Chiefs vs Dolphins game in extreme cold in early January, they might need amputations for cases of extreme frost bite. It was -4 degrees with a - 27 wind chill. 70% of those treated for frostbite that night from the game might need or were advised to amputate the affected areas. I Saw one report where a fan commented they only took their gloves off for 5 minutes to set up a tent in the parking lot and suffered terrible frostbite. I heard people are starting to call for the NFL to force fans to stay at home like during the covid outbreak if the weather is too cold, or to postpone the game or move it to a warmer environment.
Kansas City Chiefs Fans Advised To Undergo Amputation After Cold-Weather Game
Temperatures plunged below zero for the NFL playoff game, and some spectators who got frostbite are paying a horrific price.
Some Kansas City Chiefs fans have been told to schedule amputations after they suffered frostbite at the Jan. 13 playoff game between the Chiefs and the visiting Miami Dolphins, a doctor treating the patients told Fox4 on Wednesday.
The victims endured temperatures that plunged below zero in the Chiefs’ 26-7 victory at home en route to their eventual Super Bowl title. Three spectators were hospitalized for frostbite in windchills measured at -27 degrees Fahrenheit, KSHB reported.
The extreme cold snap in the area generated at least 11 cases of frostbite, and one victim died, according to the Kansas City Star.
Dr. Megan Garcia, the Grossman Burn Center medical director, said 70% of the patients admitted for frostbite during the extreme January cold have been advised to undergo amputation.
“The patients who had their frostbite injuries along with the Chiefs game, they are just getting to the point now we are starting to discuss their amputations that might be necessary,” Garcia told Fox4.
She said the other 30% will still be dealing with a “lifelong” problem. “They’ll have sensitivity and pain for the rest of their lives and always will be more susceptible to frostbite in the future,” she added. “So we are also educating them to make sure they stay warm for the years and months to come.”
The Chiefs’ game, considered one of the coldest in NFL history, has people urging the NFL to rethink their cold weather game policies.
Comments
This is the guys hand, he took his gloves off for five minutes and this is what happened to his hand.
Wow that is nasty
The weather reporting will give you a heads up on how cold it's going to be,
So some fans got hurt by the weather but no players?
Something doesn't add up
agree. so many players in that game who had exposed hands and arms the entire game
Theres no chance someone only had their gloves off for 5 minutes, everyones face would have been frostbitten if it was that kind of cold.
No one forced any of them to go to the game. Everyone there had exposed skin. It not great but when youre at the game shirtless its pretty predictable. If you have poor circulation or no winter clothes it would be smarter to stay home. Everyone else doesnt need to be punished because of it though
If the game is so cold that fans would need to be banned than the game needs to be moved or delayed because the players shouldnt be out there either
I can't see that ever happening.
Folks simply need to be more careful. If some are incapable of doing that, then don't attend the game.
I don't know if I've told this story before or not, but back in 1996 I was visiting my uncle and his wife in Colorado, my uncle is a big mountain climbing fanatic, he's actually climbed the Matterhorn, and Colorado has a big mountain climbing and rock climbing community. Anyway, I was visiting him for the summer, I was around 16 years old at the time, and he took me to this seminar at a old high school that was no longer in use. I had no idea what the seminar was about, he mentioned something about Mt. Everest but I wasn't sure what it really was about. So we get there and the auditorium is packed, and I'm not really into mountain climbing at the time, I was more into teenage stuff, girls, hanging out, stuff like that. So, the seminar gets underway, and these people are up there on the stage, and they start talking about there expedition to Mt. Everest, they had just gotten back from climbing Mt. Everest, and they were showing slides on a projector from their expedition. Well, the mood all of a sudden changes, and they start talking about how they were fighting for their lives and some of the people started crying and talking about how a storm blew in on Everest and trapped a bunch of climbers high on the mountain. I didn't realize it at the time, but a while later as I visited my uncle and started to really enjoy hiking and climbing, my uncle told me that the people at that seminar were the survivors of the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy. In May of 1996, two Mt. Everest expeditions became trapped high on Everest when a storm blew in on them out of nowhere. A storm on Mt. Everest is a bad situation to be caught in, hurricane force winds, - 40 wind chill, almost 30 climbers got caught out in the open on both sides of the mountain and were fighting for their lives to make it back to their tents. Most made it back to their tents, but Eight of them didn't and died from exposure to the brutal cold storm. The people who were at that seminar were the survivors, one of them was Jon Krakauer who wrote a book entitled "Into Thin Air." One of the survivors, Beck Weathers, didn't attend the seminar because he was just in too bad of condition to attend, he passed out high on Everest, totally exposed to the storm and his fellow climbers examined him and thought he was gone and left him for dead and got back to their tents. It turned out, Beck Weathers wasn't dead, he was unconscious and laid there while the storm battered him mercilessly. Sometime during the night, Beck Weathers regained consciousness and crawled his way back to a tent, he survived the ordeal but the damage had been done, and he suffered the worst frostbite imaginable. He had to have his hands amputated, his nose amputated and rebuilt, he later wrote a book about the tragedy entitled, "Left For Dead." Anyway, I read every book I could get my hands on about the 1996 Everest expedition, it's a tragic story that really hit me pretty hard and I will never forget attending that seminar with the survivors.
Beck Weathers at Everest base camp after being rescued.
Beck Weathers with his family shortly after returning home from the expedition.
A movie was also made about the 1996 Everest tragedy, very realistic portrayal of the actual events.
BTW - In case some didn't know, the worst thing you can do when out in extreme cold weather is to consume alcohol or be under the influence of it. An old wives tale is that alcohol warms you up. Well the exact opposite is true.
In a nutshell, the alcohol numbs the receptors of feeling cold, and therefore you may think you're warm and okay, meanwhile your skin is getting frostbit. Even death could occur from organ failure.
Fascinating story, and since mountain climbing is a sport, it's on topic for the forum.
I'm not saying I know everything about this world, but two things I have never figured out and probably never will. That is why some people enjoy mountain climbing and sky diving? My guess is they simply love the adrenaline rush thrill of it.
Well rooting for the Eagles to win a Super Bowl is adrenaline rush thrill enough for me. 😆
Mountains have a certain allure to people, they're the ultimate challenge to conquer because of a simple fact, they're deadly, they kill people. I think if it was easy, not as many people would want the goal, but people climb them for different reasons. To some it's the beauty that lures them in, to others it's the challenge to conquer the mountain itself and to push yourself to the limits. I like Clint Eastwood's famous line in the movie "The Eiger Sanction" when he's talking about trying to climb the North Face of the Eiger, he says, "I tried to climb it twice, it tried to kill me twice." Very accurate description of the North face of the Eiger. It is indeed the ultimate high if you can conquer it, I enjoyed rock climbing with my uncle, smaller stuff nothing big, but I don't have the guts to challenge the big stuff.
Mountains are indeed beautiful, when you get high enough on K2 at night, it looks like your starting to enter space itself.
K2 from a distance is very alluring, as are most mountains.
Nanga Parbat from a distance, quite beautiful.
The Matterhorn is majestic and very alluring, it almost has a hypnosis effect.
Sounds like a pretty good explanation.
I guess everyone enjoys their own version of "crazy." I've been on fishing trips whereby with expenses, etc, I spent over a thousand dollars just to catch a few dollars worth of fish.
Some tell me I could have just gone to the local supermarket, and simply bought the few dollars worth of fish. But of course there's more to it than just that. 😊
You should go white water rafting sometime, I've been twice, it's a blast!
I've done some canoeing/fishing combos down rivers. But when it came to areas of "white water" which were designated on the map, we got out and carried the canoe and supplies, past it on land, and then re-launched into calm water.
I went this past summer and it was AWESOME
I went whitewater rafting in Colorado twice in the 90s, they had different levels of difficulty on the rivers back then according to how violent the rapids were on the river, it was indeed a blast. It would be smooth sailing down the river one minute, nice and peaceful with beautiful scenery, and then all heck would break loose and everyone would have to work together to get through the rapid. I remember we had an incident, one of our team got a bit rattled and was thrown back and he collided with our guide and knocked our guide's Oakley sunglasses into the river and they were gone forever, Oakley sunglasses were popular and expensive back then, we felt bad so we ended up writing the guide a check for the sunglasses, it was insane!
Pic of thrill seeker DD flying back from his climb atop Mount Everest:
I used to teach in Colorado. Not long after the Krakauer book came out, one of my students came to me and showed me that his dad was in the book. Dale Kruse was the dad. His son didn't go into any detail, just showed me the name in the book.
Wow, that is crazy. Dale Kruse was a friend and client of Scott Fischer, he was on Fischer's team and managed to survive the tragedy because Scott Fischer helped him back to base camp after Kruse became sick with HACE, high altitude cerebral edema, mountain sickness. Unfortunately, Scott Fischer didn't survive the storm, Fischer was a guide that charged a fee to clients to guide them to the top of Everest, his company was called Mountain Madness, basically commercial tourism of Mt. Everest. Rob Hall was also a guide who ran a company called Adventure Consultants, Hall and his team of clients was on Everest alongside Fischers team that day. Rob Hall didn't survive either, he died with a client, and his assistant guide near the summit. A lot of things went wrong that day, mainly the storm catching everyone off guard, but there was also too many people on the mountain trying to summit at one time, there was a traffic jam near the top and people had to stand in line for hours just to wait for their turn to climb to the top because the guides didn't fix the ropes at the Hillary step and it took a long time to fix them for the clients. The Everest death zone is not a place where you want to hang out for long periods of time, you need to get in and out as quickly as possible. This tragedy caused a big controversy about commercial tourism of Mt. Everest, a very dangerous thing. There was a tragedy recently in the news, it was a small group of tourists that were charged a fee to be taken down to view the Titanic wreckage, their submersible had suffered from previous malfunctions but the company took the tourists down anyway, unfortunately the submersible lost contact with everyone on the surface and the submersible imploded and killed everyone on board. Commercial tourism of these kinds of places are extremely dangerous, mother nature can be a very unforgiving thing.
No, your face can take a lot more than your hands. Your hands can actually start to hurt after a while but your face will be okay.
That would be above my pay grade and I suspect Corporate would prefer that I remain silent. There was a somewhat famous Play-off game between the Eagles and Bears- can't remember the year off hand... It was the fog that was problematic.
Cold is not for me... even though I think I might have enjoyed the 1950- Ohio State -Michigan game.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Your hands dont get to amputation level in 5 minutes without the same thing happening to other exposed skin. Theres no chance that was just from gloves being off for 5 minutes and put back on.
The players were not holding cold cans of beer.😀
Windchill can occur in 5 minutes - see chart. People that have poor circulation would probably succumb sooner. The reason the hands and feet are more susceptible is because "The body responds to cold temperatures by narrowing the blood vessels. Blood flow to the extremities slows down so flow to the vital organs can be increased. As the blood is redirected away from the extremities, these parts of the body get colder, and fluid in the tissue can freeze into ice crystals."
I am not buying that person who claims frostbite after 5 minutes. it was cold, but it wasn't crazy cold that game. actual temp was only -4 I think. I have been working outside in temps up here in Maine as low as -36 before and never experienced frostbite. that was a true temp of -36. I have no idea what the wind chill was.
something else was going on there. as alluded to above, I imagine alcohol was involved and I am sure the time was far longer than 5 minutes. perhaps the persons hands were wet? I have no idea.
Many times I have been ice fishing with crazy wind chills and never experienced frost bite. I remember we would have to re-open the holes every 10-15 minutes because they would freeze over. fun times!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.