Casper Police and Fire E-M-S Compete To Raise Blood Donor Awareness [VIDEO]
Part of their job is to save lives, and on Thursday (August 20th), they were doing so in a different way, and made a competition out of it.
Members of the Casper Police Department and Casper Fire EMS took part in the 3rd annual Guns N Hoses Blood Drive, at the Casper branch of United Blood Services.
It’s a competition between the two, to see which side can get the most number of donors in for the day, and donors didn’t have to be employed by either team to participate.
They just had a choose a side that they were donating for.
Justin Irish with United Blood Services says the competition is a good way to raise blood donor awareness, but donors sometimes have the misconception that they need to wait until there's a competition or an emergency, before they have to give blood...and that's not true.
"If somebody needs blood that day, they can just donate that day, when in reality, the blood that we draw today, probably won't be used for a couple of days, 2-3 days after, because we have to go through all of our testing processes and everything, so that's a big misconception that people have. If they were in an accident today, we would rely on donors that donated 2-3 days ago."
Casper Fire EMS won the challenge 35-to-22 and got to drop a representative from the Casper Police Department into a dunk tank afterwards.
See video of Sergeant Joe Nickerson of the Casper Police Department get dropped into the dunk tank, by Casper Fire EMS (one dunk only):