Albany Fire Department provides hands-on CPR training for 8th graders

8th grade students from the Greater Albany School District learned how to perform bystander CPR and how to use an AED Thursday.

This is the sixth year the Albany Fire Department has provided hands-on training to the students.

It’s all in an effort to improve community health,

“I learned the steps of saving someone’s life from going into cardiac arrest,” said 8th grade student, Callie Plowhead.

For every minute someone is experiencing cardiac arrest, their chance of survival decreases by 10 percent. Given that the fire department may not arrive for at least three minutes, knowing how to perform this skill is vital for survival.

Sandy Roberts, the Risk Reduction Specialist with Albany Fire says, “What they are going to walk away with is understanding that you need two hands, that you are going to give CPR for two minutes, to press on the chest by two inches, let the chest come up by two inches, and we do this for two minutes with two compressions per second. It is the rule of two.”

Over six thousand Albany children have been trained in the life saving skill. The program is funded by the Albany Safety Foundation.