By Jamie Sotonoff
The Chicago Daily Herald
CHICAGO — More than a dozen suburban fire departments were recently given new lifesaving equipment they can use on animals.
The Invisible Fence pet safety company donated dozens of pet oxygen masks to local departments. Firefighters can place the masks over the mouths of animals that have been overcome by smoke and revive them with oxygen.
The masks come in three sizes, and can be cleaned and reused. They cost $60 per kit, and each kit contains three masks.
Even though they’re not expensive pieces of equipment, they’re things that never make their way into fire department budgets.
“There’s no way I could ask the taxpayers to buy these, so this is significant,” said Hanover Park Fire Chief Craig Haigh, whose department received two kits. “This is just a real enhancement to our equipment. There’s no question it will help save the lives of pets.”
Until now, the Hanover Park Fire Department has used adult equipment or CPR to resuscitate pets who have suffered smoke inhalation and are struggling to breathe. Sometimes it’s worked; sometimes it hasn’t, Haigh said.
These masks will also minimize a tough task for firefighters — telling a family that their house has not only been devastated by fire, but that their family pet didn’t survive.
“Most of the guys know these pets are very important to the family members. And they’ve got pets at home … so there’s an emotional attachment there,” he said.
The Pingree Grove & Countryside Fire Protection District received three kits. Before that, it didn’t have any equipment to help animals, said Bill Misner, head of the department’s EMS services. Even though residents requested the pet oxygen masks, and it was repeatedly added to the annual budget, the expense ended up being cut year after year, Misner said.
While he hasn’t ever responded to a fire where the masks could have helped save a pet, he’s glad to have the equipment on their ambulances and engines.
“We always like to have as many tools in the toolbox as we can possibly have, so this was a nice addition to the toolbox,” he said.
Roughly 40,000 pets die in fires every year, and as many as 500,000 experience fires annually, according to Invisible Fence, a pet safety company based in Knoxville, Tenn.
Suburban fire departments receiving the masks include Glendale Heights, Hanover Park, Hoffman Estates, Lisle-Woodridge, Pingree Grove & Countryside Fire Protection District, Sycamore, Spring Grove and Algonquin/Lake in the Hills.
Invisible Fence provided masks to whichever departments requested them, Rogers said.
Copyright 2009 Paddock Publications, Inc.