Fire district receives AED Grant from State

After starting the CPR/Public Automatic External Defibrillator program in 2006, the Destin Fire Control District has trained more than 300- plus people a year.

“Every time someone walks in here for training it’s nothing but a positive experience,” Medical Division Chief Phil Metz said during a recent board of fire commissioners meeting. “We get nothing but positive feedback.”

As part of a program run by the state Department of Health, the Fire Control District was recently awarded with an Emergency Medical Services Matching Grant. The 75/25 grant will provide the district with $20,629 to purchase 25 Philips AEDs, and after they sell the units, the initial $6,876.33 cost to the district would be absorbed.

“The funding from the state is really dropping quickly with these grants,” Metz said. “I remember the first time we got this grant we got 50 units, and it was a monumental task of getting them all out there, so it may be a blessing that we only got 25.”

Of the 25 AEDs the district plans to order, they already have “10-15” area business who are interested and purchasing a unit.

He told the commissioners that “time is of the essence” when it comes to saving lives, and that by having more AEDs in the city cannot hurt. Metz grabbed everyone’s attention when he told them that 95 percent of people who go into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital in the United States pass away.

“If CPR isn’t started immediately, and oxygen gets to their brains, the person is going to die,” he said. “And if they don’t get electrical shock when they go into a lethal rhythm, within eight minutes, they will not survive.”

Metz went on to tell the commission that that the chance of survival goes down 12-percent every minute they are not able to shock someone, and “that is why we are trying so hard to get these AEDs out there.”

Since the CPR/Public AED program began, there have been four confirmed “public saves” made in Destin, and each of the persons responsible for the save took part in the districts training, whether it was an individual helping with CPR, someone chocking, or someone applying an AED.

The discussion quickly turned to Walton County and its recent problems, after a man drowned behind Hidden Dunes, after a doctor and cardiologist on scene took turns doing chest compressions and at one point requested an AED, but one wasn’t available.

Cindy Pike, a nurse practitioner from Alabama, was on scene and helped administer CPR. She said that the AED “could have been a lifesaving piece of equipment.”

A Sheriff’s Deputy at the scene told Pike that the county had purchased a number of AEDs several years ago but had not purchased batteries for them, so he didn’t have one. Walton County Sherriff’s Capt. Shepard Bruner confirmed that the beach patrol’s AED did have a dead battery.

In light of that tragedy, Commissioner Rick Moore asked Metz about the batteries on the units the district would purchase.

Metz told Moore he “was very comfortable with” the unit, as they have been used in the past, and out of the 100 units that are in Destin, the district had placed 75-80 of them.

“The batteries are good for four to five years, or 120 shocks,” he said. “No one is ever going to shock that many times.”

The Philips machine self tests on a daily basis, and if the unit has a battery or pad issue, it will let the user know. And once the AED is used, the district goes out to inspect it, checks the batteries, and makes sure it’s working properly.

“I would just like to avoid what happened down there,” Moore said, referring to Walton County. “Just make sure we have plenty of batteries.”

Metz said that when you look at the numbers and “do the stats,” the four “public saves” that have taken place in Destin represent the five percent of people who live.

“That is why this is so important,” he said. “This has been really positive for both the district and the public.”