Nebraska schools being supplied with tourniquet kits
25th Jul 2017
When school starts this fall, Hastings area school staff will have the tools and knowledge to treat serious bleeding injuries through the help of local agencies.
The Hastings Noon Rotary and the Hastings Fire Department have teamed together to purchase tourniquet kits for each of the Hastings area schools and are hoping to expand that to all Adams County schools in the future.
The kits and training come through the Stop the Bleed program, a national awareness campaign cultivated to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in bleeding emergencies before professional help arrives.
The Hastings Fire Department started the program locally earlier this year by training both city and county law enforcement and equipping them with kits complete with bandages, gauze and tourniquets.
“If there is a violent or active shooter event, law enforcement will be first to get in and they can take down the assailant and then while they’re still securing the scene, they can start putting tourniquets on people,” said Curt Smith, assistant fire chief with the Hastings Fire Department.
“At Columbine, they surrounded the school and you could see signs, ‘Teacher bleeding’ or ‘Student bleeding to death.’ That’s where shift started.”
The idea for the Stop the Bleed came after the first Gulf War. In those early days, soldiers would be severely injured by improvised explosive devices or IEDs and soldiers would be unable or unequipped to help their comrades.
In the last 20 years, that has all changed with soldiers now carrying the tools and knowledge to help in those situations before medical assistance arrives.
“Now the survivability of lethal injuries has increased dramatically,” Smith said. “You look at IEDs and survivability and they attribute that to person next to you providing bleeding control with tourniquet or other things.”
When those soldiers came home, they wanted to start training and equipping first responders in the same way.
With first responders now trained, Smith said his next goal was to get the kits into schools.
That’s because while Hastings is a small community, it still takes at minimum four minutes for emergency responders to get to a scene and only five minutes for a person to bleed out in a serious accident.
“You may be the only one that can put the kit on before the help arrives from the outside,” Smith said.
And these kits aren’t just useful in violent or shooter situations. They can also be used in shop accidents and other situations when serious injury occurs.
“It doesn’t have to be a violent event,” Smith said. “If we can train people stop bleeding immediately, we’re going to save a lot more people.”
Each building in Hastings Public, Adams Central and Hastings Catholic Schools will receive one kit with the tools to treat one patient.
In addition to receiving the kits, schools will also receive training on how to use the kits via the Central Nebraska Medical Reserve Corps.
All officers with the Hastings Police Department have their own tourniquet kiTs. The Adams County Sheriff’s Department was also planning to acquire the kits.
Smith said he estimates the fire department has a total of 75 kits between the small individual kits and the larger kits to help more people.
“Every vehicle carries at least and then our mass casualty trailer has small kit for one patient and larger kits,” Smith said. “We have 12 small and two large kids in the chief vehicles. That way whatever vehicle shows up we have kits available.”