Trike drivers trained as first aiders

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    CABANATUAN CITY – In case of accidents or emergencies, especially on the streets, trust the tricycle drivers who may come rushing in a hurry. They may be your life’s saviour. This was the advice issued out by officials of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) as they announced that 7,000 tricycle drivers here have been trained to give first aid treatment.

    “They were commissioned as front-liners in times of emergencies like accidents and in times of big calamities. In simple terms, they are the first-aiders in the first few minutes in critical needs of the victims of accidents or calamities,” said Eugene Mintu, coordinator of the CDRRMO here.

    He said in the last few months, CDRRMO personnel trained the tricycle drivers to be capable of providing standard first-aid and basic life support. They are equipped with the knowledge on how to handle burn management, treatment of wound, insect and animal bites, sprain, and poison as standard first-aid procedures, he added.

    “They were also trained to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and rescue breathing as basic life support,” Mintu said. Mintu revealed in their consultations with officials of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office suggested to him to consider involving the tricycle drivers in the program since this city has lots of them.

    He said the city has more than 17,000 registered tricycle drivers and officials here love to call this city as “tricycle capital of the Philippines”. “We now consider them as our big assets in our continuing efforts to strengthen our city’s disaster and risk reduction preparedness,” Mintu said. “We dubbed them as TODA Rescue Campaign volunteers’”, he added.

    TODA stands for tricycle operators and drivers association. The tricycles of the trained drivers are posted with stickers bearing emergency hot line numbers. The list of emergency hotline numbers includes the Philippine National Police, Cabanatuan City Fire Station, Cabanatuan City General Hospital, Philippine National Red Cross-Cabanatuan City, and many others.

    The “TODA Rescue Campaign” is just one of the many projects of CDRRMO in beefing up its capabilities. The others listed by the CDRRMO as its rescuers include registered nurses and emergency medical technicians, among others.

    The CDRRMO, according to Mintu, is now fully functional as Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara equipped it with various life saving devices, gadgets and tools needed in times of calamities, accidents, fire and other kinds of emergencies even that which happened in the July 16, 1990 earthquake that roared through Luzon.

    In that tremor, the lack of needed equipment, tools and gadgets to save the lives of the victims trapped in the rubble was most felt. More than 130 people died in the toppled six-storey Christian Colleges of the Philippines building here.

    Mintu said that in consonance with the provisions of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, Vergara put up the CDRRMO and hired on a permanent basis people to carry out the pinpointed responsibilities of the office on a 24/7 basis.

    More importantly, he said, the mayor provided funds for the purchase of equipment and tools needed for search and rescue operations. Named officer-in-charge of the CDRRMO is Ronnie Punzal. The office is soon planned to be a regular department under the city government organizational structure.

    “We now have lifting bags that can move 85 tons of debris, hydraulic equipment, forcible entry tools, medical equipment, resuscitators and other state of the art pieces of gadgets for search and rescue operations not only for calamities like earthquake, but also typhoons and others,” Mintu said.

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