Brownsville Fire Department Lieutenant Marco Paniagua demonstrates on driver Oscar Garcia Jr. how to use a tourniquet to stop the bleeding on a leg wound Saturday morning for the 2nd annual Save a Life Event at the Brownsville Events Center.(Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald)
A fire engine with its ladder extended to the sky greets visitors to the Brownsville Events Center Saturday for the 2nd Annual Save a Life Event.
This free event from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. offered hands-only uncertified CPR training alongside Stop The Bleed training for residents of all ages.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) uses chest compressions, which help keep the oxygen in your blood circulating. CPR can be an effective tool for keeping someone alive until EMS can arrive if someone stops breathing or goes into cardiac arrest.
As with many things in life, the need to educate the public about these life-saving techniques came about due to a near-tragedy suffered by local attorney Javier Villarreal.
In July of 2021, Villarreal had to perform CPR on his son Javier when he almost drowned in a pool. His son is fine now, but at that moment, Villarreal spent three minutes not knowing if he would make it. His CPR training was able to help ensure his son’s survival.
”I think God sends you messages in different ways. So what my wife, Cynthia, and I decided to do is that we were going to turn that horrible event where we ended up having to resuscitate him and turned it into a community event,” he said.
Partnering with the Brownsville Fire Department and Valley Baptist Health System, Villarreal created an event where people of all ages can come and learn how to administer life-saving techniques that help keep someone alive until help arrives.
At the event, participants learn a simple hands-only version of CPR with just a few steps.
According to firefighter and paramedic Erick Hernandez, the first step is to check if the person is responsive. If they are not responsive, call 911, and as the dispatcher is getting information from you, begin CPR.
For an adult, you take the palm of your hand and set it right in the middle of their chest, directly center of their nipple line. Cup your palm with your other hand, and while locking your elbows and bending from the waist, use your body weight to push hard and fast. He recommends doing this to the beat of either the Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive” or Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark”.
For babies, you modify the technique to using just two fingers.
If the person is in bed and you can’t get them on the floor, Hernandez recommended placing a cutting board right underneath their shoulder blades to give you a firm surface underneath the person.
The training is for families, not just adults, for an important reason, says Chief Medical Officer Jose Ayala for Valley Baptist Medical Center – Brownsville, because statistically, that is who is likely to be around.
“This is a family event because most of the time when someone collapses at home—you, your wife, your grandma or grandpa—the very first one on the scene is going to be that kid,” Ayala said.
The shadow of the recent school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde casts a palpable shadow on the event as parents bring their children to cluster around Stop the Bleed instructors like Brownsville Fire Department Lieutenant Marco Paniagua.
Using his fellow firefighters and attendees to help demonstrate proper techniques for gun and knife wounds, Paniagua applies tourniquets, packs wounds with cotton and administers chest seals for gunshot wounds to the torso.
With a tourniquet firmly strapped around his own leg, he cautions attendees that in the event of a school shooting, they need to throw out everything they’ve seen in movies about tourniquets and immobilization.
He hobbles around the circle, slowly at first and then speeding up to show that, while painful, you can still move quickly to get out of danger with a tourniquet.
“Just because you are injured, it does not mean you are disabled,” he said.
Paniagua stressed that in these situations, your mentality should be that you do what you need to survive, keep moving and stay alive.
With her husband Matteo and 10-year-old son Octavian in tow, 7th-grade teacher Susana Pablo with Los Fresnos CISD pays rapt attention to Paniagua’s demonstration alongside the ones for CPR.
“It is a shame that schools don’t actively show us how to do this. I have been teaching for 16 years—no one has ever taught me how to do this,” Pablo said.
“Hopefully, I can remain calm when the time comes, but at least I know now what to do,” she said.
For more information or to find certification classes in CPR, you can visit the American Heart Association’s website cpr.heart.org. Stop The Bleed information and classes can be found at www.stopthebleed.org.
Valley Baptist Health Systems is available to help coordinate hands-only CPR and Stop The Bleed classes for groups, nonprofits, businesses and schools by reaching out to Marketing Coordinator Dafne Maldonado at [email protected].
