Farm Mapping and RF-DASH

Welcome to the Talking Total Farmer Health podcast, Linda Emanuel here, AgriSafe agricultural health liaison. And today I have the pleasure to talk with Jakob Hanschu. He is a research specialist at the National Farm Medicine Center, which is part of Sanford Health. Jakob, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Linda. It's great to be here today.

So you're doing a project up there that we know a little bit about, but of course, we're going to dig in today. Tell us about your interesting project, that's part of RF-DASH.

Yeah. So, RF-DASH stands for Rural Firefighters Delivering Agricultural Safety and Health. So, RF-DASH is all about giving first responders in agricultural communities the tools to prevent and prepare for agricultural emergencies before they actually take place.

So how did this program come about? And of course, just tell us more about the program in general.

Farms are a little bit more diverse, and so that's one of the challenges to improving safety. So, so one way folks have kind of dealt with these challenges is to approach it from a more bottom-up instead of a top-down perspective. And the way of doing that is we ask, you know, “who is it in the agricultural community that could influence farmers to improve the safety of their operations?” So we did a research study that basically asked who would farmers trust to give them safety recommendations? And who would they, this person, they also have to think they're smart, you know, that they're knowledgeable about safety on farms, right? So we did a study and it turns out that, firefighters emerged, rural firefighters, rural first responders, emerged as kind of an ideal candidate. So, we kind of took this knowledge, this research finding, and out of it developed a, a full-fledged training program, aimed at first responders. So the goal of RF-DASH is to train rural first responders in elements of agricultural safety and health, with the idea being that they will then go work with farms in their area to do things like hazard assessment or mitigation, pre-planning, developing emergency preparedness plans, maybe teaching first aid to farm communities or whatever it may be.

We've got five modules, that when we teach this to first responders, and others, we go through introduction to agricultural emergencies. What are these emergencies? Who's primarily infected? What's the community costs like? Then we talk about pre-planning, all the reasons you should pre-plan and map farms, which I know we'll talk about a little bit more later in this discussion. Then we talk about hazard analysis. So, what's the way, it's not just identifying hazards on farms, right? But also giving that farmer a concrete way of actually moving towards mitigating some of those hazards and improving the safety. And then, the fourth module is farm first aid. We're not teaching first responders first aid. They already know that, right? What we're doing is we're giving them the tools to go work with farmers to teach farmers first aid. So, there's some, some modules that came out of, I believe it was Penn State that actually walked through different farm emergency-based scenarios, like a tractor rollover, a PTO entanglement. And it's, it's teaching first aid through those scenarios that are fairly realistic for farm families. And then the final module is just focused on, on building relations between the fire department or first responders and members of the agricultural community. So, it's kind of more of a communications or outreach-based module.

Wonderful. There's a lot of thought that went into this as, like you said as well, science and research to determine the best approach. And why is it important that farms are mapped out, first of all, and that first responders know about where are those hazards you talked about? Farmers are constantly changing their farms and ranches, their bin sites, whatever it is, that location that they work. So why is it important that first responders understand where are those hazards?

Yeah. So like you said, you know, farms are changing. When we teach the course, we use this phrase, you know, when you've seen one farm, you've seen one farm, right? You know, you've, each farm is unique. It's like a puzzle. You kind of got to figure out what's going on, on this at this farm site. If you go to a hotel, you know, a big supermarket, all of these buildings have pre-plans because they're so large, they're so complex that if an emergency happens there, you can't just expect first responders to roll up and know immediately what to do because there's so much going on, right? By pre-planning, we can give those first responders knowledge of what's going on in this operation so that in the event of an emergency, they can have the best response, allocate resources appropriately, make sure that they coordinate with other departments if necessary. All of which leads to not only, you know, a more efficient response, but ultimately a reduction of injury and property loss for that farm as well as for the fire department. Because if, if, if, if there's an element of unawareness, you know, of, of a hazard, during a response that could injure a first responder, just as well as it could injure a farmer.

That is truly so important. I'm glad that you mentioned the safety of the first responders as well, in addition to the property. Now, for my next question, I'd like to invite our guest back from last time, Chief Jerry Minor of the Pittsville Fire Department, to share insight on how first responders use the RF-DASH farm mapping tool. Jerry, can you shed some more insight on why farm mapping was included in RF-DASH in the first place, and how it works?

When Doctor Matt Kiefer was the director, prior to Doctor Bendiksen, he asked us, "you know, what's one of the problems that when you get called to a farm, that you immediately have?" And our answer was, "well, where is everything?" And, and that's based on the fact that we don't have inspection authority and we're not really looking for it, on mom and dad's farm. The only large farm are those operations where they have ten or more employees where OSHA gets involved. In Wisconsin, again, knowing where stuff is would be accomplished if we had inspection authority. And I'm certainly not asking for that. It's better if we work with the farmer to have us come out, look things over, provide them safety information. They can provide us information about the processes that go on, on these particular farms, because again, every one of them is unique. They all don't have the electrical shut off in the same place. They all store chemicals in different places. So mapping came about from that question.

So the mapper program that we use, we take an aerial shot, whether it's a Google Earth thing or Esri maps of the farm complex. And then, on the side of the program that you're working on, there are a whole list of icons, that signify different hazards or different information. So, if I want to identify all the confined spaces on this farm, there's a little icon, it's a confined space symbol we use, in the fire service and it shows somebody crouched in a tight area. So, we click on that icon, we drag it over to where the hazard exists on the map. Where is the electrical shut off? We go to the electrical symbol and we drag that to where the, the primary electric shut off is. There may be multiple ones on, on larger farms. And then the other problem, that that farm has a emergency generator set up. As soon as we kill the power, the generator starts. So that adds another component to, "okay, now how do we shut that down?" We don't have a specific icon for emergency generator, but we have an icon that is kind of a fill in the blank. It's a little teardrop type thing. And you drag that to where maybe there's a new building there that you don't see on the map because aerial flights aren't done every six months. They're usually done every 2 to 3 years. So now when you get onto that farm, you look at the map and that whole building isn't there. Well, you drag this little icon on and it has a little text box on it where you can give a brief description of what hazard is there. There's just a whole variety of icons you can move on to this map.

One of the things that's been added within the last year or so is a alphabet text and a numbering text. And the reason we put those on is farms with multiple buildings. Dispatch gets a call for an injury on the Smith Brothers farm. "Where on the farm is the patient?" Well, they're in, they're in the commodity shed. "Well, where's the commodity shed?" If you don't... if you haven't pre-planned the farm, you're not going to know. So, we ask, and sometimes this is well received, sometimes it's not, that they number and or letter their, their buildings. "Go to building B." Multiple doors on this, this complex go to door, whatever. Again, that speeds up our response. So they can, they can identify their buildings by either alphabet or by number. And that helps us while we're in route, we can look it up and we know where building C is or building F or whatever it happens to be.

That information is stored electronically. It's part of the system that Marshfield Clinic uses, so it's extremely secure. The only people that can get into it are those on the fire department that have access. You can't break into it. You can't look at other people's maps unless they've given you access. So there is a lot of security with it. And a lot of farmers are concerned about that. And I certainly don't blame them. One of the other things related to mapping. "Where do they keep their records?" You know, in a barn fire, a lot of farmers, they have an office in the barn. And that's where the bulk of their records are. "Are they backed up in the house?" Well, a lot of them are not. So, "are there areas that we should get into right away to preserve stuff, or is there stuff we can remove if the fire is going to be really difficult to control?" Again, if we know that stuff ahead of time, we can start working towards preventing additional damage. Saves a lot of time, if I know that barn that I'm going to that's on fire requires a certain water flow to knock it down.

There's a program in mapper now that, where you can measure out your buildings and you can measure how long of a hose lay I might need from the road to the barn. I'll know it ahead of time. It's gathering information, putting it in a secure format where we can access it either en route, on the farm, ahead of time. We're trying to find a way to make our dispatchers able to access it and we haven't come up with that yet, but we will. So mapping is preplanning. We have to go out to the farm to do it. That's our foot in the door, so to speak, to get on the farm. There's a whole backside to farm mapper where you collect additional information. So you have to sit down with the farmer, the rancher and, and collect this other data. "How much, how many chemicals, how many pounds of pesticide do you have on the farm in the spring? And who is your veterinarian and who's your primary farm mechanic?" All those types of things can be collected. It's much easier to have the information ahead of time than during the event.

It is an amazing program. And, and I love that you said it's confidential, and secure. And I think that will help farmers and ranchers feel more at ease if they consider bringing this program to their farm. Of course, it's accessible for fire departments, but it's also a free service that's offered. And all it takes is a conversation and an invitation to start the process. Thank you for that, Jerry. Now, back to Jakob... Tell me, how do people access the RF-DASH training? Is there a cost? And where can people go to learn more?

Great. So RF-DASH is, at this moment, it's a, it's a free program. So we, we can do a limited number of in-person trainings around the country. We've done trainings all over. It's a free training. We've had very gracious support from, CDC, NIOSH, National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health has supported this program, for, for, for, for many years. And then most recently to really boost those training numbers, we received funding from the CHS Foundation, which it's great to receive this kind of support from industry. You know, it shows a certain element of buy in, right? They find value in this program and, and really, I really want to give a shout out to CHS because they've allowed us to, grow this program, to, to, to pay trainers to travel and conduct training events across the country. for those interested in, in, in having an RF training in their area, it's, it's really targeted at first responders. though we've, we've started also training, emergency managers, county level emergency managers, as well as extension agents. We found, especially in North Dakota, the extension agents there have really taken the program and run with it.

So it's open to anybody. If you're interested in a training, you can go to rfdash.org. and we can put that link in the show notes as well. but if you go to rfdash.org, there's all sorts of information you can get in contact with us there. There's a tab called RF-DASH trainings where you can go and try to schedule the training or, or look to see, hey, is there anybody who's been trained in RF dash in my area? because what we try to do is, is, is instead of necessarily having us come from, I'm based in Marshfield, Wisconsin, Johnson, right? Having us come from Wisconsin all over the country, if we've already trained someone in that area, we support them to actually do the training. So it's really kind of a decentralized network. And the other thing I want to talk about is we recently, in, in fall of last year, we created an online training course. So if you're interested in the RF program, you know, for whatever reason, you know, maybe you, doing an in-person training, organizing something like that is less of interest to you. or you think it might be difficult for us to get out to you? there is an online course that walks you through all of the RF dash content that you would get in the in-person training and even includes 360 degree imagery, farm walkthrough. So it's, it's kind of like a virtual farm walkthrough experience. to give you as, as close as possible, right to the real thing without actually, doing an in-person training and being on the farm.

That is cool, right? Using technology as well as that decentralized model of having other trainers, train the new folks. So it's, it's a great, great idea. And I am very appreciative that VHA has like, as you said, bought into this. it shows a sense of belief and trust that this project is certainly worthy of all of their, their farmers and ranchers that they serve. Are there any other trainings or resources out there that you would recommend, either for first responders or farmers themselves?

Yeah. So, I'm going to, float our own resources first. So our org obviously, but then, we actually, we're constantly engaged with our, our first responders who've gone through the RF-DASH program. We actually meet with them regularly through a community of practice. And one thing that's come back to us from some folks is, the, the idea of having a 911 call script for farms, improves emergency preparedness so that if there's a farm incident, you know, You know what steps to take. And this was actually, it came from, Justin and Amanda Knorr, who are first responders and farmers based out in Utah. they said, hey, we did this. they gave us permission to kind of adapt it, brand it. And now we've, I think in the last year, we've sent 4 to 500 of these out to farmers. You know, the thought is that you could put this, you know, if you're, if you're a big operation, you put in the employee break room, you put it in the shop wherever it may be. so I'll get a link to that, that, that we can put in the show notes as well. beyond, you know, what we do, related to RF dash, the National Farm Medicine center, which is my, my home institution, I'd encourage you to follow us. our social media team is always posting tips and tricks and, and various safety things, resources.

For first responders, the, the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety, Dan Neenan's group down there. He's got a really robust program doing more of the hands on, so like grain bin rescue. I know they recently, in Wisconsin for a manure pit, simulation. so, so that's a really great group. And then the last thing I want to raise, to, to folks attention is, is your NIOSH agricultural safety and health centers. So a lot of folks don't know about these. There's 12 of them kind of scattered throughout the country. The, the one based, there's one based in Minnesota. And that's what's supplied a lot of funding for the, the RF-DASH program. But these NIOSH centers, they're focusing on agricultural safety and health. they do research on things like infectious disease, but they also do outreach programs. They provide training, you know, whether it's, it's, you know, PPE fit testing, right? whether it's, pesticide application stuff, whether it's a webinar on, manure exposures, whatever it may be. So. So, that's a resource. If you just look up NIOSH ag centers, you'll be able to find them there usually acronym based names. but, but these are really great resources experts that, that, in agricultural safety and health, there are a lot of times in people's backyards and they don't, they don't necessarily realize it so.

Very much so. And those ag health and safety centers specialized in the type of agriculture that's happening in their region. So they really drill down to what is needed for our farmers and ranchers to help them to live a safer and healthier, healthier life. And so absolutely, folks should take a take a good look at that. So is there any this has been a great conversation, Jacob. I've learned a lot about farm mapping and the RF program. And of course, we definitely thank you for your time and commitment and interest in that work. But is there anything else you'd like to share?

Always opportunities to learn more. Always, always.

Definitely.

Well, thank you for your time, Jakob. Once again, we appreciate your work. And, we look forward to hearing more and learning more as this program continues to, to reach out into the country.

Thank you, Linda. And, I appreciate the opportunity to kind of share the program and I hope to, maybe chat with you again sometime soon, so.

Absolutely. Thank you. Alright, that wraps up this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Your listenership greatly matters, it really does. This episode was created by AgriSafe Network, directed by Laura Siegel, hosted by me, Linda Emanuel, edited by Joel Sharpton for ProPodcastingServices.com, with special guests Jakob Hanschu and Fire Chief Jerry Minor.