Fort Assiniboine Fire Department shows off their wares

It wasn’t Sunday, but it didn’t stop members of the Fort Assiniboine Fire Department from putting on their own version of their Sunday best, dress uniforms and highly polished shoes.

On Tuesday, Feb. 2, Woodlands County council visited the Fort Assiniboine Fire Department as part of their ongoing tours of the fire departments in Woodlands County. Earlier in the day council visited the Blue Ridge Fire Department.

The tour began with the councillors being treated to dinner.

After dinner firefighter Ashley Marcellus, and the department’s medical officer, described a trauma-training course many firefighters took over the weekend.

She said the goal of the fire department is to be off scene with the patient in 10 minutes.

“People talk about the ‘golden hour’ when a trauma patient has their best chance of surviving, but that hour begins when the incident occurs to when they arrive at the hospital,” she said. “By the time we get the call there is already a delay and even though we have a really good response time, as a volunteer fire department we have people responding from their houses, so that is more time taken away from that hour.”

Marcellus went on to describe some of the other topics members learned during the course, such as learning how to immobilize patients with possible neck or spinal injuries properly before transport.

Fire chief Jeff Schulte said at first he thought only two or three of his members should take the course due to the sheer amount of information students have to learn.

“It’s pretty heavy stuff, but the quality of the instruction was so good and the instructor did such a good job getting us through it, now we have that many more of our people who will be able to put that training to good use,” he said.

The tour then shifted to the storage bay where members of the fire department explained the uses of the various pieces of equipment, including two recent additions to the department, the department’s Rapid Deployment Craft (RDC) and the LUCAS CPR system.

The RDC is a non-motorized polyester alloy material inflatable boat, which when inflated can be carried to a scene by two firefighters.

“We can deploy it just about anywhere, in almost any body of water and it can be used for a wide variety of water rescues,” Schulte said, adding it is especially useful for river rescues.

The LUCAS CPR system is an automated chest compression system, which can be placed over a patient, and it performs automated CPR compressions.

Firefighter Doris Kuelken explained one of the challenges emergency personnel have when performing CPR is fatigue.

“Even if you have other people to spell you off, fatigue quickly sets in and the quality of compression quickly diminishes. With LUCAS it keeps giving the same high quality compressions regardless of the amount of time,” she said, adding the system greatly improves a victim’s chance of survival.

Schulte said that kind of quality and consistency doesn’t come cheaply.

“It is an expensive piece of equipment about $16,000, but it will save a lot of lives,” he said.

Mayor Jim Rennie thanked the fire department for the tour and said it was important for council to not only see how the taxpayers money was being spent, but to understand why.

Fort Assiniboine Coun. Dale Kluin, who is also a member of the fire department, said during their council meeting later in the evening, council’s visit was important for another reason.

“I can’t tell you how important it was and how much it meant for all our members,” he said, adding the members were busy for two days preparing for the visit. “We have had open houses, where our members dress up in their finest and then have just a few people come out. What we did tonight is important. Our fire department is proud of what they do and this meant an awful lot to them.”