RUMFORD — About 20 children attending the second week of the Greater Rumford Community Center‘s summer camp on Wednesday learned about ambulance equipment and bicycle safety at Black Mountain of Maine ski resort.

Med-Care Ambulance driver Seth Marshall explained how equipment is used to save lives and treat injuries and illnesses prior to or during transport to a hospital.

Inside, Rumford police Sgt. Douglas Maifeld taught his bike safety course and explained patrol car features at his cruiser parked near Med-Care’s ambulance.

“How many of you have ever been inside an ambulance?” Marshall asked his first group inside the ambulance after handing each youth a purple latex glove.

Every child’s hand shot up.

Mikayla Burse of Rumford said she had the ambulance come to her a few hours earlier after she’d banged her knee and her mouth. Two siblings said they’d been in a bad car accident.

Explaining how to hydrate a dehydrated patient, Marshall said a needle would be inserted into a vein and an intravenous line attached to that. He took an IV fluid solution bag and placed it on a pole beside the stretcher.

“The cord will hang down and it will put fluid into you in case you’re dehydrating,” he said.

He explained what’s done when a patient’s oxygen drops too low.

Describing a “nose cannon,” Marshall said it is placed in a nostril and connected to an oxygen delivery system, which is then started to provide oxygen.

“It will get you some oxygen to keep the blood flowing,” he said.

“That’s one way, and then if your oxygen level is low, low, low, low, where you need oxygen quick, we can’t do it by the nose, because it would be too much.”

“So, we take this — it’s a bag that goes over your whole face — and we do the same thing,” he said, connecting a line from the mask to the oxygen system.

Inside the lodge, Maifeld taught a group of children to always where their helmets when riding bicycles.

He showed them how to use proper stop and turn hand signals and to ride with traffic on the far right side of a road and not into traffic. He said it wasn’t good to drive into traffic, in case the bicyclist fell over.

“When two forces come together, it’s hard to maneuver around that,” Maifeld said.

But if the bicyclist was riding with traffic, if he or she fell over, drivers could react in time to avoid striking the cyclist, he said.

Camp Director Emily Child of Mexico and Co-Director Shaina Mills of Rumford said the summer camp began last week for children ages 6 to 13 and will continue through the end of July.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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