Subaru and Arconic donate Tyvek suits to Lafayette firefighters
Credit: WLFI
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Medical protective gear has been hard to come by as the world works to combat covid-19.
Firefighters are one group feeling the effect.
News 18's micah upshaw tells us how tippecanoe county industrial companies are stepping up to help.
Our need for personal protective equipment has really increased and so we reached out to our industrial partners.
And the industrial partners stepped up.
Subaru and arconic join a number of tippecanoe county industries that have donated tyvek suits and other medical gear to the lafayette fire department.
We do a lot of training with some of our industrial partners in lafayette and the surrounding area, so we reached out to them because we knew they had very similar personal protective equipment.
This essentially will protect them, their body from those droplets getting on them.
Lafayette fire chief richard doyle says more than 75-percent of their runs are medical-emergencies.
Because of this, firefighter often have to break six- foot diance recommendation.
We still have normal runs, we still have people that have heart attacks and fires and floods but covid-19 is out there so we need to protect us on every run that we go on.
Micah stand up: these suits can only be used once and the only thing they can reuse are the goggles so once they run out, they plan to use rain suits.
As of right now, we have about four days of equipment left before we either have to re-supply or we have to go to another option.
Subaru donated 75 suits on sunday and chief doyle says firefighters go through at least 20 a day.
Their main priority is keeping staff safe.
We keep our numbers safe so that we can still respond to not only this outbreak of covid 19 but also just to normal things.
In lafayette, micah upshaw news 18.
Chief doyle says the department is expecting medical equipment from the federal government.
Until it arrives, the department will continue seeking help from its industrial partners.
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