A new safety program has been launched at ENMAX Centre through a partnership between Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services, building staff and contractors, the City of Lethbridge, along with the Lethbridge Hurricanes organization. The home of the WHL team received the first STOP THE BLEED kit. Inside the kits are hemostatic dressings, which reportedly are ten times more effective than regular gauze when it comes to controlling bleeding because the medication on the dressings triggers a clotting action and a tourniquet that can be used on injuries on arms and legs to help stop blood flow to the wound.
Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services Chief, Greg Adair says the STOP THE BLEED awareness campaign is not new, having been sparked by the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012. However, in the past year, a critical incident with a hockey player in Europe ended in the player’s death and started the conversation again about the need for another line of defence if that situation were to happen here.
“You pack the wound as effectively as we can with the dressing and then we put pressure on there for up to five minutes. Obviously, we call the ambulance and the ambulance will come and take over, but that is what we can do for a serious or potentially deadly bleed at the start of the incident,” Adair says.
Assistant General Manager and Coach for the WHL team, Matt Anholt says the reality of hockey, is players play at high speeds with sharp blades attached to their feet and the hockey community has seen tragedies in the past.
“We were even just talking, we had a staff member here who had an incident a few years ago with a heart issue when he was at the rink and it could happen to anybody. So, anybody needs to be able to work with the new [automated external defibrillator] machine that we have here now, along with cuts with STOP THE BLEED and understanding how to handle a [situation] from all facets of CPR or a bad gash that is essential for a body to sustain life.”
According to Adair, LFES is planning to expand this project to other city facilities, with ice rinks being their first focus and from there they are looking to partner with other interested organizations including schools.
The ENMAX Centre STOP THE BLEED kit is located on the ice level of the facility, next to the AED.