On an unusually snowy day in late April, representatives from emergency departments across the Kenai Peninsula are gathered in Girdwood for an unboxing party.
“This is like Christmas, this is amazing,” one fire chief said. “It’s like Christmas in April with all different boxes here,” said another.
It really is like Christmas. There’s a cake, and macarons, and a group photo opp. Brown boxes line the floor, ready to be unpacked. But instead of holding toys, the boxes are filled with half a million dollars worth of emergency extrication equipment, designed to make it easier for first responders to rescue car accident victims on the peninsula’s highways.
And the cake? It’s a life-sized replica of the jaws of life.
About a dozen emergency departments operating between Girdwood and Homer — many of them volunteer run — have been working with decades-old extrication equipment. Responders say that equipment is heavy, difficult to operate, and can be the difference between life and death in certain accidents. On the Sterling and Seward Highways, high-speed crashes and snowy conditions mean a constant need for the equipment. But now, a grant will pump hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jaws of life, stabilizers and other vehicle extraction equipment to the rural peninsula stations.
Michelle Weston is the fire chief in Girdwood. She helped organize the purchase, funded through a mix of public and private donations, a highway safety grant from the Alaska Department of Transportation, and more than $300 thousand from the Alaska Legislature.
“Vehicles are different materials now, and they have different strengths,” she said. “So having extrication tools that are out of compliance, we weren’t able to effectively cut people out of cars.”
She said the new equipment is lighter, making it easier for female emergency technicians to use. She said that’s important for departments like hers, which is 30% female, or Cooper Landing Emergency Services, where about half of volunteers are female. Weston said it will also allow for greater collaboration between departments, since they’ll now have compatible equipment.
City of Kenai Fire Chief Tony Prior said that will be a big benefit to his department.
“We have mutual aid agreements with both Central Emergency Services and Nikiski. And a lot of times, anything that happens on a highway is very manpower intensive,” he said. “This totally helps them and us, when we show up with the same equipment and we train with the same equipment.”
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche was also in attendance. He said peninsula residents rely on the Sterling and Seward Highways for almost everything.
“It’s how we get back and forth. It’s our life. It’s the blood vessel that controls all activity on the Kenai,” he said.
Although it’s spring, the new equipment wasn’t a second too late. In the midst of the event Tuesday, Girdwood emergency responders headed out to an accident in Turnagain Pass at mile 69 on the Seward Highway, amid near-white-out conditions. The responders were armed with the newly unboxed tools.
