Cold winter weather is traditionally celebrated as part of what makes football so great, but something about that heightened atmosphere tends to distract many people from common sense. The Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Miami Dolphins for a playoff game on Wild Card Weekend, where temperatures dipped to -4 degrees and -27 when factoring in windchill at the kickoff. The telecast showed some fans in the stands at Arrowhead Stadium not bundled up nearly enough, or even shirtless.
You can get away with braving the elements to a certain point. In this instance, there were all kinds of warnings about how cold it was going to be. Those fans who heeded the warning presumably managed the conditions OK. Others who threw caution to the wind weren’t so lucky.
As reported by FOX 4 KC, 70% of patients who had frostbite-related injuries from that game are “being advised to schedule amputations.”
Schedule amputations? “Yeah, just go ahead and give us a call, let us know when it would be a good time to hack your fingers off.” Just brutal…
Grossman Burn Center at Research Medical Center medical director Dr. Megan Garcia passed along the information to local news outlets after seeing many patients who were dealing with such injuries. She also commented on how long of a road to recovery it is for the 30% fortunate enough not to have amputations:
“It’s still a lifelong process. They’ll have sensitivity and pain for the rest of their lives and always will be more susceptible to frostbite in the future. So we are also educating them to make sure they stay warm for the years and months to come.”
Right after the game, which the Chiefs won 26-7, 15 fans were sent to the hospital for frostbite and hypothermia. No clear indication on how many patients there were overall for injuries of that nature. I suspect there were more than that in the end.
It’s understandable that fans would be excited about a Chiefs home playoff game. This was a unique postseason in that Kansas City didn’t have home-field advantage throughout. The Chiefs had to go on the road the rest of the way and grind out wins in Buffalo and Baltimore before beating the 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. All that said, it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around what would possess these people to not adhere to official weather warnings.
I feel really bad for these people despite the flagrant stupidity it took to believe that they could best Mother Nature. Of all the highly avoidable, awful scenarios any given person could suck themselves into, trying to act hard during a historically cold day is up there with one of the worst. The fact that the game itself goes on for multiple hours should be reason enough to realize that you’ll need to layer up as much as possible. Getting blasted by freezing temperatures while sitting or standing still for a long period of time is so innately dangerous.
What a tragic situation, and one that will haunt the victims for the rest of their lives.
