Re-purposing Preparedness Resources to Protect Patients During Extreme Heat
When temperatures rise during East Tennessee summers, outdoor events can quickly create challenges for medical teams caring for participants, staff, and visitors. During the summer of 2026, the Knox/East Tennessee Healthcare Coalition (KETHC) identified an opportunity to use existing preparedness equipment in a new wayā€”transforming an inflatable decontamination tent into a portable cooling and treatment station.
From Decontamination Tent to Cooling Station
The inflatable tent was originally purchased to support hospital decontamination operations. Rather than limiting the equipment to that specialized mission, KETHC combined it with other coalition resources to create a climate-controlled area that could be rapidly deployed during outdoor events.
The cooling station includes portable air-conditioning units, folding benches, floor fans, internal LED lighting, external 10-foot inflatable scene lights, power cords, and other support equipment. Together, these resources provide medical personnel with a dedicated space where individuals experiencing heat-related symptoms can be moved out of the outdoor environment, cooled, evaluated, monitored, and treated.
Supporting Community Events Across the Region
During 2026, the cooling tent was deployed by different medical organizations supporting several types of community events, including a baseball game, hot air festival, and elementary school agricultural field days. Ā These deployments demonstrate how the same resource can be adapted to meet the needs of different agencies and event settings
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Helping Treat Patients Where They Are
One of the most important benefits of the cooling tent is that it gives healthcare and EMS personnel another option between treating someone outdoors in extreme heat and transporting that individua
l to an emergency department.
Early cooling and on-site medical evaluation may allow some patients with heat-related symptoms to be safely treated and released at the event. When appropriate, this can help reduce unnecessary ambulance transports and emergency department visits while preserving EMS and hospital resources for patients who need a higher level of care.
Making Preparedness Resources Work Harder
This project highlights an important part of healthcare coalition preparedness: resources purchased for one mission can sometimes be combined or repurposed to meet emerging needs.
By adapting equipment already available within the coalition, KETHC expanded the usefulness of its preparedness assets while creating a resource that can support EMS agencies, healthcare organizations, event medical teams, schools, and community partners throughout the region.
The cooling tent is a practical example of how regional collaboration, creativity, and preparedness investments can strengthen everyday medical operations while also building capabilities that are available when larger emergencies occur.
Prepared today. Adaptable tomorrow. Supporting healthcare across East Tennessee 24/7/365.