Most CWI coverage focuses on equipment. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Procedure 60, revised June 2026, is a reminder that the protocol itself needs to be written down with the same precision as any other advanced life support procedure. It formally defines both cold water immersion (CWI) and Tarp Assisted Cooling Oscillation (TACO) as rapid cooling methods for heat stroke, and it addresses a scenario many departments haven't documented: what to do when crews arrive at a scene where cooling is already underway.
Two methods, one standard
Procedure 60 treats CWI and TACO as interchangeable rapid-cooling tools depending on what's staged: full immersion to the neck when a tub is available, or a tarp filled with ice water and continuously agitated by responders when it isn't. Miami-Dade's documented target is consistent with the wider evidence base, reducing core temperature below 101.5°F within 30 minutes, and the procedure explicitly instructs crews to continue cooling that's already been started by on-site medical staff, athletic trainers, or event personnel rather than interrupting it to begin transport.
Why the "already set up" scenario matters
This detail is easy to overlook but operationally significant. Miami-Dade runs a high volume of athletic events, endurance races, and large public gatherings where on-site medical teams may already be cooling a patient when fire-EMS arrives. A protocol that tells crews to continue rather than restart avoids losing minutes to a handoff, and it puts the department's own equipment standard in direct conversation with what event medical directors are staging in the field.
The gap this exposes for event organizers
For that "already staged" model to work well, whatever the on-site medical team deploys has to be fast enough, stable enough, and generous enough in capacity to actually complete the immersion before fire-EMS transport decisions are made. Improvised tarps and kiddie pools are slow to fill, prone to leaking, and hard to reset between patients during a multi-casualty heat event, exactly the failure mode the ACSM 2023 Expert Consensus Statement and IOC/BJSM 2021 guidance both flag as a barrier to reliable field cooling.
Where Kollder fits
Kollder One™ is built for exactly the pre-staged model Procedure 60 describes: a stainless steel tub, 205×80×60 cm deployed, that one operator sets up in under 2 minutes and that holds its shape and water without the leaking or collapse issues common to Velcro-seamed or tarp-based alternatives. For event medical directors staging cooling before fire-EMS arrival, and for the fire departments that need to trust what they're inheriting on scene, that reliability is the difference between a protocol that works on paper and one that works on the day of a mass-participation event. Details and quotes at kollder.com/#contact.
Pour aller plus loin / Further Reading
- Cool First, Transport Second: The Complete Protocol Guide
- Cooling Station Setup for Sports Events: A Guide
- Cold Water Immersion vs. Other Methods: A Comparison
- Demander un devis Kollder / Request a Kollder quote
Sources: Miami-Dade County, Procedure 60, Cold Water Immersion (CWI) / TARP Assisted Cooling Method (TACO), rev. June 2026; ACSM Expert Consensus Statement 2023; IOC, Hosokawa Y, Racinais S et al., BJSM 2021.
Kollder is the emergency cooling tub that deploys in under 2 minutes, anywhere.
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