Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/09/fans-suffering-frostbite-after-freezing-kansas-city-chiefs-game-may-require-amputations.html
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Ow, those poor folk. Adding insult to injury, I bet the medical bills sting, too; hyperbaric treatment does not sound cheap.
“The Big Foam Fingers! They do nothing!”
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I got frostnip this winter, walking from the grocery store only a couple blocks away. I was carrying bags so couldn’t protect my hands by putting them in my pockets. It’s easier and faster than you’d think, and was pretty scary (and temporarily painful once the numbness wore off). Be extra careful out there.
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A prize for the first person to find some plonk blaming Taylor Swift.
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You may experience numbness in those digits every subsequent time you get even mildly cold. I got frostnip (great term; had never heard it before) about 30 years ago, and I still have two fingers go numb if I do anything chilly.
But at least I still have them!
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For those of us who use celsius, that’s -20 to -33
Sometimes I forget how mild the weather in the UK is, for somewhere so far North.
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Shouldn’t stadium management have some statistical sense of how long the fans have been sitting there and the ambient temperature? Even if it just resulted in some special warnings on the big video board that might be the least they should do.
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I don’t understand. Didn’t they feel cold?
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I live in the UK since a fair while back, and I appreciate the weather. Sweden in general doesn’t get that cold either*, and I moved away when young. Visiting my family back in Gothenburg back around Christmas 2010, it was cold, really cold. Like -15 at least IIRC. I complained about the cold at which point my grandmother immediately, and very seriously, told me I’d “grown soft living in the south”.
I enjoy having grown soft, and I think I could grow a little softer still - maybe Spain would help.
*the parts most people live in that is, the southerly bits.
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It feels cold at the start, but it doesn’t take fingers and toes long to go numb, and once they’re numb they stop feeling cold and you don’t realize the increasing damage being done.
I suspect the big issue is that you were dealing with people who didn’t know how to deal with those kinds of temperatures, the conditions sound similar to the Heritage Classic in Edmonton back in 2003 and people talked about the cold, but I never heard about amputations.
The difference is that most of the crowd in Edmonton grew up with those winters, so they knew how to dress (lots of layers, good circulation) and knew to go warm up the moment they couldn’t feel some extremities.
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Horrified by this. It’s a gear problem, and gloves are one of the harder bits to get right. Most people probably weren’t uncomfortable, but if you underglove, there’s no saving it. I’ve been to a game in 0* and wasn’t particularly cold. Liner gloves, fleece, mountaineering mitts, with a way to pop layers on and off to eat or whatever.
Handing out overmitts of some kind (socks?) to put on top of whatever people brought seems like a thing to put in the stadium’s event planning going forward
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Not after the first fifteen minutes, no. And lots of social pressure to stick it out rather than get to shelter.
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“Fan” is short for “fanatic”, checks out in this case. 
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I wonder if some of those effected were from Miami and not used to the cold. I imagine even if people were miserable, the price of the seats might have kept people in place, internet tells me average cost is $419.
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I really dont want to sound like a smart ass…but…you were wearing gloves, right?
not used to it?!? sitting for hours outside at -30°C is even with “adequate” clothing just stupid very dangerous, no matter where you from.
(youre all right about that. that was very insensitive. apologies)
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I got “frost nip” on the tip of my nose once back in approx '00 while night snowboarding on Wachussett Mountain. The skin on the end of my nose turned black and crackly and fell off after about a week, and it burned in the cold for a while afterwards. What a scary experience.
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I’m not into sportsball, but victim blaming and shaming people who will have lifelong injuries because they chose to attend an event in person…
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Maybe you would like to dial it back from “stupid” a tad? Because one of the inherent aspects of frostbite and hypothermia that differs from other kinds of injury is that it sneaks up on you.
For example: a friend from high school went to a college way up north in the midwestern US. He ran cross-country. Knowing how cold it was, he and his teammates dressed appropriately for the weather. No skin exposed, ski goggles, etc. My friend got frostbite through his running watch. The metal backplate was fused to his skin. Was my friend stupid?
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Dressing to walk around outside when it’s cold and dressing to sit stationary in the cold are two completely different beasts. The former requires a hoodie, long underwear, winter jacket, insulated snow pants, toque, gloves, boots and face scarf. While the latter requires wearing all that plus every other piece of clothing you own and bringing some foam to insulate your seat and probably some heat packs.
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