The Brownsville Fire Department is encouraging the public to come out Saturday morning for the 2nd Annual Save a Life CPR and Stop the Bleed training event at the Brownsville Events Center.
The department, in cooperation with local attorney Javier Villarreal and Valley Baptist Medical Center, is offering the free training from 8 a.m. to 12 noon. Free breakfast will be provided and prizes will be raffled throughout the event.
“It’s a quick session for any age to come and learn CPR,” Fire Chief Jarrett Sheldon said. “The process we’re teaching is hands-on CPR. It’s only a two-step process — Call 911 and push hard and fast on the chest if someone’s in cardiac arrest.”
Shelton said the Stop the Bleed portion is a hands-on class that teaches the basics of identifying and treating life threatening bleeding through the use of tourniquet, wound packing and pressure dressings.
“It’s going to be taught by some very skilled instructors within our agency, other agencies around us, and Valley Baptist Medical Center,” he said.
“We had a great turnout last year, and we’re hoping this event gets bigger and bigger,” Shelton added. “We want to stress the importance of really knowing what to do in case there’s an emergency and having the resources to be able to react, at least until our medical staff can get there.”
Shelton said some of the department’s firefighting and EMS equipment will be on display as well.
“We’re just encouraging everyone to come out, meet some of our firefighters and paramedics out there, look at some of our state-of-the-art firefighter and EMS equipment and just enjoy the morning. It’s a free event, free training. It’s a great thing for families to get together and have something to do on a Saturday morning,” Shelton said.
