EVERETT – Thanks to the Everett Medic One Foundation, the new Imagine Children’s Museum will save a few thousand dollars and maybe some lives.
At a museum board meeting this week, Medic One donated an automatic external defibrillator for placement in the museum’s new location at the corner of Wall Street and Hoyt Avenue in downtown Everett. The new museum is set to open its doors Sept. 19.
Nancy Johnson, the museum’s executive director, called the donation “invaluable.”
Even in Everett, a city with impressive emergency service response times, every second counts should a museum patron go into cardiac arrest, she said.
Museum staffers take periodic CPR classes, which is how they learned about defibrillators. But the museum had no money in its budget for the device.
So they called the Medic One Foundation, which “graciously gave consideration to our request and fulfilled it,” Johnson said.
Jack Robinson, deputy chief for the Everett Fire Department’s emergency medical services program, presented the defibrillator to the museum board Wednesday evening. He even took the time to show them how it worked.
“For us to be able to have it, because we serve so many people of all ages, it’s such a reassurance – knowing we’ll be able to do everything possible until emergency help can get there,” Johnson said.
Sudden cardiac arrest kills an average of 7,000 children a year, according to the National Center for Early Defibrillation.
According to studies by the American Heart Association, CPR alone saves about 3 percent to 5 percent of victims of sudden cardiac arrest, but having a defibrillator available can dramatically improve those odds.
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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