Anchored in Readiness: Learnt First Aid at the Marina Society

It always leaves a bit of a mess, so we invite the local fire brigade to have an exercise and clean our parking lot.

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Earlier this week, our marina society invited me to attend a course on first aid and, in particular, on resuscitation and the use of an automatic heart defibrillator.

All our harbour masters need to be fully trained and certified to perform resuscitation (heart massage and mouth-to-mouth) and need to be able to operate the automatic heart defibrillator.

As it so happens, I am also a volunteer in our village for these matters. I go on a repeat course every December to stay current. But with these things, practice makes perfect. The Netherlands has more than 25000 AEDS as we call them (Automatic Heart Defibrillators) all over the country. Our tiny village has four!

When you are certified, you can choose to join the first aid group on an app. Which means you can get a call out on an emergency near your own location. When people have problems with their heart, the first 10 minutes are crucial! After ten minutes of heart stoppage, survival rates come down dramatically. Unless the body is undercooled. (E.g. drowned, slid under ice and so on.)

Over the years, we have had several medical emergencies in our marina that required resuscitation and the use of the AED! Partly to do with the average age of our members, I guess. I am considered one of the younger members!

The course is given by two of our local GPs. One is from the same village as we live in and we are practically neighbours.

It's always good fun and very useful!

When I arrived, the local fire brigade was out in force, busy with a training exercise on our parking lot. You might recall from an earlier post that during wintertime, we haul out some of the members’ boats and put them on the parking lot.

It always leaves a bit of a mess, so we invite the local fire brigade to have an exercise and clean our parking lot. We have a special bypass in our sewer system. All the water from the parking lot goes through various strainers and a big reservoir before being pumped out into the river again. So we catch all the debris.

These days, lots of young women join the fire brigade. Good to see these young ladies having fun and getting a bit of practice. Most of our fire brigades in smaller towns are volunteers! So they will have a regular job. But they need permission from their employer to make themselves available during a call-out. And they need to live/work near the fire station, obviously.

Quick update on the problems with my electronic convertor: I ordered a new one, a different brand. It arrived, I installed it and the exact same problems!!

Back to the drawing board as they say!

Jeroen

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