FENNVILLE, Mich. — A West Michigan fire department that's been working to become a "heart safe" community has installed two machines to help in the event someone goes into cardiac arrest.
It's all to honor a teen who passed away from cardiac arrest after a basketball game around 10 years ago.
Fennville Area Fire Department had the machines donated to them, but in order to install them, they had to purchase temperature-controlled, secure boxes to put them in.
The Efroymson Family Fund out of Indiana saw the story Fox 17 News did back in June, contacted the department and donated the around the $3,500 required to purchase and install the boxes.
Those boxes were finally installed in September.
"We're hoping that by having these in the community, it's going to get help to people faster," said Fenneville Area Fire Department Firefighter and EMT Robert Rivait.
"Basically the Wes Leonard Heart Team way back started giving AED’s out to schools. We thought there should be some out in the community as well for faster response time and to help people get AED’s on," said Fennville Area Fire Department's Fire Chief Paul Hapke.
The city of Fennville is one step closer to becoming a “heart safe” community by installing two AED machines downtown.
— Lauren Kummer (@LaurenKummerTV) October 18, 2021
It’s all for a high school student, Wes Leonard who passed away from cardiac arrest 10 years ago at a basketball game. @FOX17 pic.twitter.com/t8kLxbmj2B
The city of Fennville now has two AED's installed outside of buildings in their downtown area, one outside of the police station and the other at E. Fennville Street and E. Main Street.
"We're hoping that people that have medical emergencies will be able to utilize them faster. These are equipped. They automatically call a phone, and so we're able to talk to them through the phone, and there's an emergency push button, they can actually activate just the phone part, so we can get them help quicker," said Hapke.
Studies show having an AED machine within the first three minutes of cardiac arrest can increase survival rates by over 80%.
"We try to be as fast as we can with our response time, but just getting this in the hands of people is going to greatly affect the outcome if somebody does have a cardiac arrest," said Rivait.
Fennville Area Fire Department is just hoping this can be an extra tool to keep people safe.
"We would really hope that other communities would kind of run with this. It took quite a bit of work to do," said Rivait.
Fennville Area Fire Department said they're so closing to earning the "heart safe" community title.
They need to train at least 10% of their population in CPR. Currently, they only have around 20 to 30 people left to train.
If you are interested in being trained in CPR, you can call the Fennville Area Fire Department at (269) 561-2148.
