KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Chiefs fans heading to Arrowhead on Saturday are walking into a preseason opener with a serious weather warning attached: temps in the 90s and a late-afternoon heat index climbing above 100 degrees.
Emergency responders in Lenexa are urging people to plan ahead, hydrate early and take the heat seriously before they even get to the stadium.
“When you get into the 90s, and some of these days have been in the 100s, and that’s when you get heat exhaustion and heat stroke,” Lenexa Firefighter and EMT Aaron Bagby said.
Bagby said his crew handled three heat-related calls in one day this week, and he laid out the warning signs fans should watch for. The first clues can be cold sweats, heavy sweating and a loss of electrolytes. If it gets worse, speech can start to slur, and that’s the point where emergency help is needed.
“You’ll get cold sweats, you’ll start sweating profusely and then you’ll start noticing you’re losing, especially if you’re not replenishing. You’re losing electrolytes,” Bagby said.
“Your speech can kind of slur. Once you get to that point, you need to call emergency services.”
His advice starts with the obvious but essential: water and electrolytes. He also said alcohol should be limited, and if fans are going to drink, they should be alternating alcoholic drinks with water and electrolytes.
Bagby said sugary sports drinks aren’t the best choice either.
“Sports drinks such as Gatorade, things of that nature, you want to kind of stay away from those, because those are pretty high in sugar,” Bagby said. “You want to replenish the salt and look for anything that has electrolytes in it and not a lot of sugar.
So, things like, there’s electrolyte packets that have no sugar. You also kind of want to stay away from caffeine, as well.”
The message from Lenexa responders is simple: start hydrating now, not once you’re already baking in the parking lot.
That parking lot will open at 10:30 a.m., more than four hours before kickoff, and fans like Rachel Dossett and Miles Aarnold know they’ll be dealing with the heat for a long stretch.
“A friend asked us to go, it was before we knew the weather was going to be so hot,” Rachel Dossett said.
Dossett said she’s hoping for shade in the stands and plenty of water during the afternoon.
“I’ll be excited if the seats kind of have some shade. But it’s at 3 p.m. and that’s supposed to be the max temperature,” Dossett said. “So just hoping to maybe find some shade and drink some water.”
Aarnold already knows what can happen when heat and alcohol mix. He said he dealt with heat exhaustion at a game last season.
“Last year, he got heat poisoning and got sick,” Dossett said, “because he didn’t drink water, only booze.”
“Yeah, minor heat exhaustion,” Arnold said.
Arrowhead says fans are allowed to bring one sealed 20-ounce water bottle or smaller into the stadium. Water fountains and cooling stations will also be available throughout the concourses.
For this trip, Dossett and Arnold plan to keep it simple: light-colored clothes, lots of water and very little alcohol.
“Don’t do what I did,” Arnold said, “Drink lots of water and limit your alcohol,”
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