Burn Disaster Preparedness Requires Strong Systems and Coordination Across Healthcare and First Responders

Recent global events serve as an important reminder that burn disasters, whether caused by conflict, industrial accidents, wildfires, transportation incidents, or fires in public gathering spaces, can place extraordinary demands on healthcare systems. While such events are fortunately rare, their impact on patients, families, and communities can be profound. 

Responding effectively to severe burn injuries requires coordination across an entire system of care. Firefighters, emergency medical services, and other first responders are often the first to encounter burn victims. Community hospitals and emergency departments play a critical role in early stabilization and triage, while trauma systems and specialized burn centers provide the complex surgical, critical care, rehabilitation, and long-term recovery services that burn patients often require. 

In many burn disasters, firefighters and first responders are not only rescuers but also victims, underscoring the importance of preparedness that protects both patients and those who risk their lives to save others. 

Real-world incidents continue to show how rapidly burn disasters can overwhelm even well-prepared response systems. Recent international events, such as a New Year’s Eve bar fire in Switzerland earlier this year, highlight how quickly fires in public gathering spaces can generate large numbers of burn and inhalation injuries within minutes.  

If a similar event were to occur in the United States, it would test the coordination of firefighters, emergency medical services, community hospitals, trauma systems, and specialized burn centers working together to manage multiple critically injured patients. Events like these reinforce the importance of strong communication systems, situational awareness of burn capacity, and coordinated patient movement across regions. 

For decades, the burn care community has recognized that effective disaster response requires coordinated planning. Early work in the burn literature in the late 1980s highlighted the need for national coordination of burn capacity and patient movement during mass casualty events. Since that time, burn care has evolved significantly, supported by advances in trauma systems, specialized burn center verification, interdisciplinary care teams, and national data collection. 

Today, burn care sits at the intersection of trauma surgery, critical care, rehabilitation medicine, nursing, therapy services, psychosocial care, and long-term recovery. Burn injury is not only an acute trauma and critical care condition, but it also often becomes a complex chronic health challenge requiring coordinated multidisciplinary care over months or years. 

The ABA represents this interdisciplinary expertise through a diverse membership that includes surgeons, nurses, therapists, emergency physicians, psychologists, researchers, and other specialists dedicated to improving outcomes for patients with burn injuries. Through its clinical expertise, educational programs, and national burn data infrastructure, the ABA serves as a trusted resource and advisor to healthcare systems, policymakers, and emergency response partners. 

Central to these efforts is the ABA’s national burn registry and related data resources, which provide valuable insight into burn injury patterns, treatment outcomes, and system performance. These data help inform clinical best practices and support preparedness planning for both routine burn care and large-scale emergencies. 

Burn disaster preparedness also intersects with broader national healthcare readiness efforts. Strengthening hospitals' and trauma systems' ability to manage large numbers of burn patients is an important component of national disaster preparedness and medical response planning. Collaboration among civilian healthcare systems, federal agencies, military medicine, and emergency response organizations helps ensure that specialized burn expertise can be mobilized rapidly when needed during large-scale emergencies. 

In February 2026, the ABA convened a national Burn Disaster Summit, bringing together leaders from burn centers, trauma systems, first-responder organizations, military medicine, and federal partners to examine how the burn care community can strengthen preparedness before large-scale events. 

“Burn disasters test every part of the healthcare system and represent a complex, time-sensitive injury that challenges seasoned providers unfamiliar with burn care,” said ABA President Jeffrey Carter, MD, FABA. “Our care is inherently multidisciplinary and demands collaboration across the continuum of care. Nowhere is this clearer than when we encounter large numbers of casualties and our systems are stressed.” 

The ABA supports these efforts through high-quality education, novel research, and collaboration across the burn care community. For example, programs such as Advanced Burn Life Support® (ABLS) help equip physicians, nurses, military personnel, and emergency responders with standardized approaches to the early management of burn injuries. The ABA’s network of verified burn centers provides a critical foundation for specialized burn care capacity across the United States. 

These conversations will continue at the April 2026 ABA’s Annual Meeting in Orlando, where clinicians, researchers, first responders, and healthcare leaders from around the world will gather to explore new strategies to advance burn care, strengthen system coordination, and improve national readiness for burn disasters. 

“Burn disasters are low-frequency but high-consequence events,” said ABA CEO Ed Dellert, RN, MBA, CAE, FACEHP. “Preparedness depends on the systems, partnerships, and expertise we build long before a crisis occurs. The ABA is committed to working with clinicians, first responders, health systems, and national partners to ensure that the burn care community is ready when patients need specialized care most.” 

Through continued collaboration among first responders, hospitals, burn centers, researchers, and national partners, the burn care community remains committed to ensuring that patients with severe burn injuries receive the specialized care they need, whenever and wherever it is required.