Free 'Stop the Bleeding' training offered to public Saturday
New London — A group of more than 50 people on Saturday took turns simulating the sometimes painful art of applying a tourniquet.
Along with direct pressure and packing a wound, the tourniquet was one of the life-saving lessons outlined in a Stop the Bleed program and lecture at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy hosted by Kevin F. Reilly, an emergency manager with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with help from emergency medical instructors.
The program was free to the public and falls on National Stop the Bleed Day, a nationwide effort to train the public in hemorrhage control techniques to save lives in the event of mass shootings, terrorist attacks and accidents. The initiative was prompted by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
Speaking to the mix of emergency responders, Coast Guard cadets and civilians in attendance, Reilly emphasized that the tourniquet is specific to life-threatening injuries. Tourniquets, which can be as simple as a piece of cloth, are used to wrap an extremity and tightened to constrict blood flow to a wound.
“When you think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, that is a lot of blood,’ it’s time for a tourniquet,” he said.
Saturday’s program also touched on how to survive an active shooter event and included a video with a re-enactment of an office shooting, emphasizing situational awareness and instructions to “run, hide, fight.”
“Run if you can, hide if you must, and if your life is at risk, fight ... act with aggression,” Reilly said.
The overall message of the lecture was the high death tolls from mass shootings and other events could be lessened if more civilians knew how to control bleeding.
Most mass-casualty fatalities result from uncontrolled bleeding but up to 25 percent of the victims die from wounds that are not necessarily fatal, extremity wounds being the best example, Reilly said.
“No one should die from an extremity wound,” he said.
One good example, he said, was the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three people and injured several hundred, including 16 people who lost limbs. The quick emergency medical response and use of improvised tourniquets saved the lives of every person who lost a limb.
Saturday’s event featured guest speaker and retiring Norwich police Officer Jonathan Ley, who was shot multiple times in 2013 during a standoff with a despondent man. Ley credited his fellow officers, who used a tourniquet on his leg and carried him to a waiting ambulance, with saving his life.
“Why is this training important?” Ley said. “You are going to use this someday. It saved my life.”
Reilly said there were three watershed events that prompted major changes in responses to mass-casualty events.
The first was the deaths of 18 soldiers during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 that prompted the U.S. military to revise its rules on combat casualty care and adopt the use of tourniquets.
The 13 people shot and killed in 1999 by students at Columbine High School led to a change in police response to active shooting events. Police are now duty-bound to confront the shooter rather than wait for a SWAT team.
The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 led to the creation of a joint committee tasked with developing protocols to “enhance survivability” in mass-casualty and active shooter incidents. The committee’s recommendations are called the “Hartford Consensus.”
Reilly said the outcome of the Hartford Consensus was Stop the Bleeding training for civilians with no medical background.
“Every single citizen needs to be a first responder,” Reilly said. “Don’t wait for an ambulance.”
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