CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A new Texas law now requires every school in the state to have a bleeding control kit. The Corpus Christi Independent School District says its students and staff are prepared in case of an emergency. In fact, the district is working to be more than compliant.
The top cause of preventable death in traumatic injuries is bleeding.
Today, first responders say having a bleed control kit is the first line of defense in saving lives.
I've seen it here in my district where an employee accidentally cut themselves,” said Kirby Warnke CCISD Chief of Police. “In Santa Fe the first officer that responded was shot and I’ve seen the footage and I saw the bleeding and they applied a tourniquet and saved his life.”
A new law now requires all Texas schools to have a bleed control kit like this one. He says all 58 of his campuses have one. In fact, many of them have more than one.
“We're compliant with the letter of the law, but we want to be compliant with the spirit meaning we want to saturate our campuses with bleed control kits,” said Warnke.
Each kit comes with bandages, scissors to cut through clothes, a tourniquet, and simple step-by-step instructions on how to prep an injury. Many of the school staff are already trained on how to use them.
“We've already trained all the trainers as ‘train the trainer’ so they can train staff and me and my team are training all the admin staff,” said Warnke.
He adds that the next step is to get students trained up. The district will be offering bleed control kit training to students from 7th grade and up, later this semester.