Tallahassee businessman donates life-saving equipment to Pine Park VFD

Travelers in the Pine Park community are safer today thanks to a donation that happened after a chance meeting volunteer firefighter Brian Atkinson had while working at his day job.

Atkinson serves as second lieutenant at the volunteer fire department in Pine Park. His paid job is with Cal-Mart Inc. of Cairo.

While finishing a job in Tallahassee about a month ago, Atkinson’s boss, Cal Lauder of Cairo, introduced him to their client, Hal Eastman.

As it turns out, Eastman is a retired firefighter with the City of Tallahassee and now owns his own business, Rescue Systems Unlimited, and is a distributor of Genesis Rescue Systems.

Less than three weeks after meeting Atkinson, Eastman donated to the volunteer firefighters in Pine Park a set of tools commonly referred to as the “jaws of life.”

Last week, Eastman traveled to the Grady County fire department and trained the firefighters on how to use the refurbished 17C combination tool made by Genesis.

“It cuts as well as spreads. It can spread the door off (of a vehicle) and cut roofs,” explains Eastman. “That tool has 96,000 pounds of cutting force.”

Eastman says he always tries to support volunteer fire departments since they are often low on tools and funding.

“They can hopefully save a life and I can do my good deed and be glad to help the volunteer departments,” he says. This donation is valued at about $11,000, according to Eastman.

Dave Mitchell, who serves as chief of the Pine Park department, says funding is an issue for all volunteer fire departments in the county. “It’s hard to justify jaws of life when you’ve got firemen who need turnout gear at $4,000 a set,” Mitchell says. “We were totally excited about this.”

As the department that serves U.S. 84 East, these firefighters say they are used to working car accidents, sometimes having to wait on another department to bring them a set of the powerful cutting tools. If the county’s rescue truck is out on a call, the closest set of jaws of life is at the Midway fire department.

“The majority of our calls are accidents,” says Atkinson.

Eastman says time is of the essence when someone has suffered a traumatic injury, such as can occur in a vehicle accident.

“They call it the ‘golden hour’,” says Eastman, “Anyone who suffers trauma, the first hour is important to get them to the hospital.”

He says cutting someone out of a wrecked vehicle quickly is important so they can get to the hospital in time.

By the time the Pine Park volunteers finished training last week, they were able to get a “victim” out of the training car in less than six minutes, Eastman says.

Royce’s Towing and Recovery donated the car that the firefighters trained with, according to Richard Phillips, chief of the Grady County Volunteer Fire Department.

Atkinson says he has volunteered as a firefighter for nearly 14 years. Mitchell, who has been chief of the department the last four years, has worked as a volunteer firefighter 35 years.