The Brooten Fire Department spans approximately 157 square miles in three different counties, which includes the city of Brooten, and Lake Johanna, Gilchrist, Bangor, North Fork, Crow Lake, Colfax, Raymond and Chippewa Falls townships.

All R.D. Offutt Company team members who are active volunteer firefighters were invited to apply for a Community Builder grant. As part of the application, the employee was required to explain how the grant would benefit the local community along with information about his/her personal commitment to the fire department. Daran Solbreken, team lead for the Brooten Farm and dedicated volunteer firefighter for 23 years, submitted the Community Builder grant for the Brooten Fire Department.

The devices are being purchased with a $29,822 grant from The Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation. Plainfield District Fire Chief Jeff Drake worked with the Firehouse Foundation to secure the grant. Drake is also the part-time fire chief in Solon Township. Last fall he secured a similar grant from Firehouse to purchase a similar device for Solon Township.  

The devices will provide mechanical chest compressions to a victim of a cardiac arrest, which American Heart Association studies show increases the chance of survival for the victim and frees up the rescue personnel to perform other critical functions. 

One technology proposed to overcome these limitations and provide GPS location tracking and messaging for firefighters is satellite messengers. The Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting (CoE) was requested to conduct a study of these devices to analyze their utility for firefighters. This study illustrated the technical specifications of two consumer-grade satellite messengers, the SPOT Gen3® and the Garmin inReach® (formerly known as the DeLorme inReach), and provided information on service options and costs. The study also assessed the capabilities of the SOS feature common to both devices and employed field trials to evaluate the performance of the devices in various types of vegetation and terrain.

The new machines not only offer cardiac support, but also measures how well an individual is breathing, replacing a separate blood pressure machine by monitoring a person’s oxygen saturation, auto checks a person’s carbon monoxide levels, conducts EKG monitoring, measures blood pressure and more.

Darling said the department will keep its older devices that check carbon monoxide levels, because often when dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning, the crew is dealing with multiple victims. This would be the case when a home’s furnace malfunctions, or for use to bring up a firefighter’s oxygen levels.