By Kalin Krohe, Panhandle Post
During the most recent Alliance City Council meeting, council approved to purchase mechanical CPR devices for the Alliance Volunteer Fire Department.
The chest compression systems are made by LUCAS 3 and cost $30,164.64.
"It's a mechanical device that we put on the patient that's in cardiac arrest that does the chest compressions," Alliance Fire Department Chief Troy Shoemaker said. "That frees up another patient caregiver to come up with IB access to push cardiac drugs. Really what it does is it gives high quality CPR compressions because when you take the human factor out of chest compressions we have more high constistancy chest compressions."
Shoemaker said the new device is programmed by the current guidelines for CPR. This helps move the fire department into using better technology.
"The fire department is going to have to embrace technology a little bit more," Shoemarker said. "The reason why I say that is, is our membership of volunteerism is consistently either stagnant or it decreases. When the economy and the community decrease so does the volunteerism."
Council also approved an Alliance Volunteer Fire Department roster update with a deletion.
"You'll see another one at the next council meeting with a deletion because of furloughs." Shoemaker said. "If we can embrace technology to eliminate and put people where we need to put people we're better off in the long run. And this is one way to do it. It's one chest compression system for each city owned ambulance. "
In other business, council:
-Approved the 2021 Rehabilitation Project agreement with M.C. Schaff and Associates for the Pavement and Asphalt Overlay Projects.
-Approved the Alliance Airport coronavirus response grant submittal. The grant application is for $13,000 and will assist the airport with utility bills or debt reduction.
-Approved to use council contingency funds. This will authorize the use of $30,000 from the Electric System Contingency to cover the cost of the diesel fuel used to operate the generation plant. The city provided support to the Southwest Power Pool during the extreme low temperature days in Feb.