News
Defibrillator for Bannockburn Firefighters
The AED recognises lethal cardiac rhythm and advises to shock the patient or provide CPR to re-establish an effective heart rhythm.
Sudden Cardiac Arrest can affect anyone without any prior warning signs - adults, teenagers or children and the best treatment for such is defibrillation, which is most successful if administered within the first few minutes.
It is stated that access to AED in the first few minutes dramatically increases the chances of survival from less than 5% to 70% or more. The CFA has recognised this and only recently has approved the purchase, at the Brigades cost, of AEDs.
CFA members are often fighting fires in remote locations and under very stressful and taxing conditions where access to ambulances and medical facilities is not readily available so the addition of AEDs is a very welcome one. We would ultimately like one AED on each of our appliances and the Bannockburn Brigade is currently working towards approval for this.
While the primarily purpose of the purchase of AEDs by Brigades is for providing First Aid to CFA members, CFA policy does allow for the AEDs to be used to treat non-members where requested by a member of the public. The acquisition will also mean that when our appliance (tanker) is on the fire ground the unit will be available to all others that are involved in the fire fight. So it will not only benefit the members of the Bannockburn Brigade but members of any other Brigade that may have a need for its use during fire fighting activities.
The grant is a “Community Grant” for a “Community Need” and one that the Bannockburn CFA members and members of other Brigades are grateful for. Our brigade is often present at community functions and so this new defibrillator will also be available for general use at these functions in an emergency. Our hope is that we never need to use it but if it is required we can feel that we did everything we could to maximise the patients survival chances.
The Bannockburn Brigade thanks the Bannockburn and District Community Enterprise for their positive consideration and the facilitation of the grant.
Barry Planner
Bannockburn CFA Captain
