School administrators, firefighters and nurses gathered last month for a Stop-the-Bleed class in Haines. Participants practiced lifesaving wound care skills, and discussed how the separate agencies would cooperate in case of a mass casualty incident in rural Alaska. First responders had to apply a tourniquet to a bleeding mannequin in under 30 seconds to earn a Stop-the-Bleed certification.
Bleeding is the number one cause of death in a trauma. A recent class at the Haines firehall taught people the skills to respond quickly.
Steven Karnazes is the Disaster Preparedness Manager for the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC). He lives in Hoonah, but visited Haines in February to teach the ‘Stop the Bleed’ class.
“The report just came out from the Boston bombing that showed that 90% of the patients that were brought in had some type of first aid or tourniquet applied,” Karnazes said. “And over 90% of them were inadequate, as deemed by the surgeons and the doctors that received them. People were putting things like shoelaces on, doing their best. But this kind of initiated our nation’s training plan that we have to do a better job at teaching everyone the skills that it takes to stop a bleed to save a life.”
EMS procedures for wound care have changed over the years. Karnazes said that tourniquets were not always used by EMS. But combat science developed from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved that tourniquets are highly effective in saving lives. The SEARHC class provided a kit to participants, and it was equipped with a commercial tourniquet.
But Karnazes said the public can buy a tourniquet online for seven dollars. He said that a tourniquet should be part of any first aid kit, especially a hunter’s kit. And if a commercial tourniquet cannot be quickly found, he said that a purse strap, ratchet strap or belt can all work to save a life. But shoelaces are not wide enough to be effective.
The class taught wound packing for gunshot wounds as well. Amber Long is the nurse manager of the Haines clinic and attended the class.
“Right now we’re learning how to pack a gunshot wound using a roll gauze method and our fingers,” Long said. “It’s a good refresher not to let off pressure while you’re packing that gauze, like take your finger out and put more gauze in.”
Administrators from the Haines school also attended the class. They told Karnazes that they plan to order Stop the Bleed kits for the school. Karnazes said that there are grants available to cover the entire cost of the kits, and he’d like to see the kits in every classroom. He said there’s also a nationwide push to teach the class to not just staff, but to students as well.
“We’ve had a number of school shootings where they were like, ‘Hey, had we done some wound packing, we probably could have saved some lives for students,” Karnazes said.
Karnazes calls both wound packing and applying a tourniquet “perishable skills.” They need to be practiced at least once a year, or they will be lost. He said that SEARHC hospitals are required to hold one class, like Stop the Bleed, every year. And they are required to hold one “full, multi-agency drill” each year. Drills are in the field, and professionals work together to triage patients dressed in fake injuries.
Clinics, unlike hospitals, are not held to this mandate. However, SEARHC tries to hold both a class and a drill once every two years at all of its clinics. Haines first responders will hold a drill this summer, where agencies will work together and respond to a mock Mass Casualty Incident, or MCI.
“We hope and pray that we never have an MCI. But Haines did have an MCI last year,” Karnazes said. “And so, typically it seems like their history is that they have one a year.”
Clinics can declare an MCI any time they feel overwhelmed by the number of patients. Karnazes says that the last time the Haines clinic declared an MCI was in August 2024, when a canoe with nine people flipped in Chilkoot Lake, and many had to be transported and treated for hypothermia.
Haines Volunteer Fire Department Medical Director Noble Anderson, who also attended the class, explained that Stop the Bleed is an especially important skill to rural Alaska. There is no blood bank or blood bank access in Haines. Blood can be delivered from Juneau by the medivac, but immediate wound care is essential.
The Haines Fire Department plans to teach a Stop the Bleed class for community members in the next year.
