RL-B students learn safety lessons

• Safety first

Dean Christopherson of Worthington demonstrates how quickly farm equipment can snatch someone’s clothes if they’re too loose Tuesday at Safety Day in Brewster.

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BREWSTER — Fire, germs, all-terrain vehicle collisions and farm equipment with rapidly moving parts are just a few of the everyday dangers Round Lake-Brewster students learned to protect themselves against Tuesday during Safety Day in Brewster.

“If we can save one arm or one leg, it’s worth it,” said Carol Christopherson, promotion and education chairwoman of the Nobles County Farm Bureau. “A lot of these accidents happen. ... We try and gear (Safety Day) toward everyone.”

Safety Day started as Farm Safety Day 16 years ago, when it was offered at the Nobles County Fairgrounds. Since then the program has shifted gears to more general safety education and moved into the classroom, where more students can benefit from the lessons and demonstrations.

Each year representatives from local organizations visit a Nobles County school on a rotating basis, so each school gets to have a Safety Day every few years.

Though Safety Day doesn’t focus purely on the farm, it still does include a little farm safety, for farm kids and the town kids who visit their friends and may be encountering farm machines for the first time.

Dean Christopherson of Worthington and Jerry Luinenburg of Brewster not only told sixth-graders not to wear loose or torn clothing around machinery, they demonstrated what could happen if someone did, showing how clothes could easily get sucked into a machine. Open-toed shoes and hoods with drawstrings or loose parts were also a definite no-no, they warned.

Christopherson and Luinenburg cautioned students never to walk in front of or ride inside a loader.

They explained how dangerous an auger can be, especially because safety features that will stop an adult’s foot from getting ripped up won’t necessarily keep a child’s finger or hand safe. And an auger can take the finger and pull the rest of the arm in, too, Christopherson said.

“Accidents can happen so quickly,” Luinenburg said. “You just have to think safety all the time.”

Just a short distance away, Jay Clarke, an investigator with the Nobles County Sheriff’s Office, was telling the story of four local children who suffered injuries when their ATVs collided. To prevent severe accidents, ATV riders should wear helmets, slow down at intersections and ride them only one person at a time.

And no one younger than age 16 should be driving an ATV at all, unless under the direct supervision of an adult, though there are safety classes for students 14 and older.

David McNab and Stephen Heimgartner, emergency personnel with the Worthington Ambulance, showed RL-B students some of the equipment from their rig, explaining how they can use it to tell how someone’s heart is behaving and even use defibrillator pads to attempt to jolt an irregular heartbeat into a regular one.

“We can deliver a baby in the back of the ambulance,” said Heimgartner.

Brewster Fire and Rescue personnel, including Robert McNab, Joe Leighty, Monica McCoy and Brian Soleta, demonstrated how clothing and other materials burn or melt, and advised students to have a fire escape plan with two different exits from the house.

Brad Meyer, Nobles-Rock Community Health Services administrator, taught students about germs, including those that cause seasonal influenza and H1N1 Novel Influenza.

“One of the best ways to protect yourselves is to wash your hands,” Meyer said.

Tags: state and region, round lake-brewster, news, education, safety