Dec. 8, 2018 – Allenton, WI – On Saturday, Dec. 8 the Allenton Fire Department is hosting a seminar designed to encourage rural firefighters and EMS to become more involved with preventing and preparing for farm injuries.
The educational series includes state-of-the-art technology to help keep farmsteads safe and aid emergency responders with knowledge about the facilities.
The National Farm Medicine Center developed Rural Firefighters Delivering Agricultural Safety and Health (RF-DASH) as a 5-year project for local emergency responders and farmers to create a safer work area on the farm for employees and for responders.
The project further provides farm safety tools and knowledge to rural firefighters through community colleges, emergency responder training events, and individual training officers. The class on Saturday at the Addison Town Hall is the first of its kind in southern Wisconsin.
As stated on the RF-DASH website, “The overall goal of this project is to improve the farmers’ access to capable health and safety consultation by providing rural firefighters and emergency responders with farm safety knowledge and tools, thereby reducing farm hazards and improving farm safety.”
According to Ron Naab of the Allenton Fire Department and instructor for Washington County Farm Safety Certification, “Farming traditionally is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.”
The intent of the 5-year Rural Firefighter Delivery Agricultural Safety and Health [RF-DASH] project is with specific aims for the farms and the emergency responders:
- Instruct farmers, farm families, and farm workers in Farm First Aid in order to raise injury awareness and disseminate prevention strategies.
- Perform agricultural safety consultations for farmers with the assistance of the SaferFarm.org in order to increase the number of competent agricultural safety consultants.
- Utilize Farm Mapping to Assist, Protect and Prepare Emergency Responders (Farm-MAPPER) in order to prevent injuries to firefighters during farm emergencies and expedite response times.
- The National Farm Medicine Center research team will utilize social network analysis and anthropologic data to describe and efficiently navigate the existing network of agricultural health and safety experts, fire training institutions, firefighters, insurance companies, and farmers.
- The research team will develop guidelines and technical assistance resources in order to promote sustainability, update curricula, and enable replication of the RF-DASH model in new regions.
- The development of a program that provides a program that will analyze hazards of common farm elements, called SaferFarm.org.
- Through the National Farm Medicine Center [located in Marshfield, WI] they have developed a tool to allow for pre-plan of farmsteads to expedite response, limit damage as a result of a fire, and keep fire responders safe by accessing information about the farm on a cloud based, secure link.
A number of departments will be attending the all-day program starting at the Addison Town Hall. During the day two teams will be visiting farms in the Allenton area including Sunset Farm and Level Acres Dairy.
The teams will be challenged with assessing hazards, safety information and become familiar with the operations. The instructors for the day are Fire Chief Jerry Minor of the Pittsville Fire Department and Angie Yerke FF/ EMT-A of the National Farm Medicine Center.
For more information click HERE.
