By Miranda Matarazzo
Watertown Daily Times
PHILADELPHIA, N.Y. — Staff in the Indian River Central School District will have an additional tool in their own emergency response kits thanks to Indian River Ambulance Services.
A total of 30 crisis response kits are to be presented to the school today in front of Stacy Cavellier’s advanced-health class.
Director of Operations and CEO Lance P. Ronas said he was inspired to create the kits in the aftermath of the October mass shooting in Las Vegas.
“I saw a story on TV of a woman who had been shot in the leg,” said Mr. Ronas, an EMT, “and she said the only reason she survived was because someone had made a tourniquet out of a belt for her.”
The kits contain tourniquets, compression gauze and triage gear to help prevent blood loss. Mr. Ronas said the team’s initial plan was to put the kits together using its own supplies, but “as word got around, more people wanted to chip in.”
Fire and ambulance crews that serve the school helped sponsor the purchase of the kits, along with Masons and Rotarians throughout the area. “The community’s compassion was overwhelming,” Mr. Ronas said.
Ms. Cavellier said the donation was “just another example of how generous the community is.” School Health Services Director Olga J. Dolly said Ms. Cavellier’s students seemed like “a nice audience,” as “many of the students are looking at careers in the medical field.”
Ms. Dolly and Mr. Ronas said the kits would help support the Department of Defense’s “Stop the Bleed” initiative, to help the public better respond to emergencies.
“The department does safety presentations to faculty, and these new kits will make a great addition to those presentations,” Ms. Dolly said.
Mr. Ronas said that having people on scene who know how to respond in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is crucial.
“There can be a lot of time between when an emergency first occurs and when EMTs are allowed access to a scene,” said Mr. Ronas, “and in that time, people can die.”
After presentation of the kits to Ms. Cavallier’s students, district officials are to decide which schools to send them to and which staff to train.
Copyright 2018 Watertown Daily Times