Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Whelen Springs VFD Learns CPR

Members of the Whelen Springs Volunteer Fire Department had a good time learning CPR and first aid Saturday.

This was done as part of Safe Families Weekend. The Diamond Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross put the class on.

Those attending learned how to perform CPR on adults, children and infants, along with basic first aid techniques.

The purpose of the class was to train them to overcome any reluctance to take action in emergency situations and be able to recognize and care for those in life-threatening emergencies.

They were taught how to identify and respond to emergency situations by checking the safety potential to themselves and the victim(s), how to reduce the risk of a heart attack and how to reduce the risk of injury to infants and children.

According to information from the Red Cross, 75 percent of all out-of-hospital heart attacks occur in the home and about 1.25 million Americans have coronaries annually.

Of this, 500,000 die from the heart attack, with more than 160,000 of those suffering the heart problems being younger than 65 years of age.