Defibrillators installed in Alpine Energy vehicles

Defibrillators installed in
Alpine Energy vehicles

A heart-felt move by Alpine Energy Ltd recently has left the community a safer place.

As the power company well knows, electrical current comes in many guises. Known mostly in the South Canterbury community for providing the power for our homes, farms and industry, Alpine has added a new dimension – the life-saving kind.

The company has equipped its fleet of vehicles as well as some substations and offices with defibrillators, those shoe-box sized saints that have saved the lives of many people throughout the country who have suffered a cardiac arrest.

Alpine Energy chief executive Andrew Tombs said this week the decision to spend more than $50,000 on the defibrillators was an easy one to make – “they save lives”.

Mr Tombs said his company’s vehicles were often in the public domain.

“It’s the nature of our business and we saw the opportunity to add to our safety profile in the field by equipping 16 vehicles, which already have first aid kits and fire extinguishers on board, with defibrillators,” he said.

And aware that doctors or trained staff are often unavailable at short notice when someone suffers a heart attack, Alpine’s health and safety committee has chosen Zoll automated external defibrillators (AEDs) meaning that lay responders or bystanders are able to use them successfully with little, or in some cases no training at all.

Mr Tombs said a sticker on the window of Alpine vehicles would show where the defibrillator was installed in the vehicle, enabling anyone, staff or passers-by, to respond quickly in an emergency. The AED has voice prompts to guide untrained responders through the process of applying life-saving electric current to a heart attack victim.

Having an AED handy can increase the chance of survival by up to 40 per cent when dealing with a sudden cardiac arrest, he said.

Statistics show that every year more than 1000 people in New Zealand will suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospital. Many of these people have no warning since they show no prior symptoms and, sadly, fewer than 5 to 8 per cent survive unless they receive immediate treatment. A defibrillator applies a short powerful electric shock to the heart allowing the heart to regain its natural rhythm and so enhances the victim’s chance of survival.
Alpine Energy has appointed its health and safety committee training and compliance manager Steven Small to take charge of the new resource and provide basic training to field staff.

Alpine Energy’s initiative, one of many by a community conscious company that provides thousands of dollars in sponsorship and community benefits annually, provides a significant advance in emergency first response for South Canterbury people.

The high cost of the defibrillators has been made more affordable by a group procurement policy that has already meant significant savings to consumers in infrastructural components.

Group procurement manager Brendan McNeice said the defibrillators were purchased in bulk as part of a joint company deal with line distribution company Netcon.

“Alpine Energy Ltd and Netcon Ltd have been able to secure more attractive procurement rates for supplies and materials by combining their purchasing power,” Mr McNeice said.

“The group buying initiative has also extended nationally to combine the collective purchasing power of some of New Zealand’s largest electrical utilities such as Transpower, Northpower and Vector. This has enabled the Alpine Group to access significant purchasing discounts for electrical infrastructural plant and materials,” Mr McNeice said.

Ends

© Scoop Media