GIG HARBOR, Wash. — Every classroom in Gig Harbor’s Peninsula School District now contains equipment no teacher ever wants to use. Tourniquets, medical equipment and gauze in emergency backpacks were donated to each teacher in the district, thanks to parent volunteers and a $48,000 donation from St. Anthony Hospital.
The gear is used to stop bleeding during serious injuries, including gunshot wounds in the case of a school shooting.
This comes as the United States marks its 36th mass shooting since January, with the latest mass killing happening Wednesday night in Lewiston, Maine, when a man opened fire at a bowling alley and a bar, killing at least 18 people.
"It's very unfortunate we have to plan for events of this nature, but we also want to be prepared," said Dino Johnson, Chief Operating Officer for the hospital.
Johnson said parents from Gig Harbor contacted the hospital asking for the medical equipment.
Teachers at the district have been learning how to use the gear from Dr. Quinton Hatch, an Army surgeon from Joint Base Lewis McChord, who volunteers off-duty teaching tourniquet techniques to civilians.
On Friday morning, he headed up a class for more than a dozen St. Anthony Hospital employees, also holding classes for school nurses, teachers, and students in Gig Harbor, Port Orchard, and Seattle.
He said having a tourniquet, and knowing how to use one, eases anxiety for people working in places where a shooting might happen, anywhere.
”You can do what’s within your space, and this is something that’s very tenable and easy and empowering, which I think is the most important thing,” said Hatch, ”Is it everything that we can do? No. But it’s something, and it’s a start.”
Hatch said he is working with other doctors to try and get the emergency kits, and the training on how to use tourniquets, required for every teacher in the state.
The Gig Harbor parents who organized the effort to get the emergency kits in classrooms started a website about their work to supply medical equipment to schools and give gunshot wound aid lessons to teachers.