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Twenty-six seconds. That’s how quickly a person with arterial bleeding and an elevated heart rate can bleed out, but provided there’s effective response available, that person can survive and recover.

As part of area schools’ in-service training, Coffee County Sheriff Department has provided Stop the Bleed training for both Manchester City and Coffee County school district employees to help school staff know how to deal with an assortment of traumatic wounds.

Manchester City Schools Director Dr. Joey Vaughn said during the Westwood Middle School training that the training is part of the district’s safety plan.

“We appreciate the partnership with the sheriff’s office and Lt. (Daniel) Ray,” Vaughn said.

Ray, of the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department and the officer administering the class, said that in the case of arterial bleeding, response has to be fast.

A synthetic leg with artificial wounds were given to groups of teachers to practice stuffing wounds with roll gauze and applying tourniquets.

“You can tell the difference from a kinda bleed and bleed, bleed,” Ray said. “I know that sounds weird but you can.”

Ray has personally seen the type of severe bleeding he was teaching local educators to respond to when he responded to a call for a victim who pulled a shunt from his arm with a pair of needle nose pliers.

Jumping into action, Ray tossed a towel over the wound and then began to wrap it tightly.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I’d never had any of this training before.”

“It was the creepiest thing ever: he looked at me and said ‘I’m about to die,’ ” Ray recalled.

The man lived, and Ray was motivated to learn traumatic injury response and then to teach it.

Thoughts during the class returned to six-eight years ago when a student slipped off to climb a tree, fell and impaled an arm on a branch. When the branch slipped from the victim’s arm, and arterial bleeding was suspected.

WMS Principal James Dobson knows firsthand the value of the training. During his time in the Army in Iraq, Dobson’s scout platoon was ambushed and five soldiers wounded. While the senior scout was receiving aid from the medic, Dobson, caught up in the moment didn’t feel the blood gushing from his own leg.

“I never checked (myself),” he said. “We’re fixing everybody and I’m bleeding out.”

What saved him was as they were working on the wounded, the medic was sitting on Dobson’s leg.

“I had a brand new driver, and we’re heading back to our FOB (forward operating base) and I’m about to die,” Dobson said, recalling his field of view narrowing, vision graying.

But the medics were able to stop the bleeding using technics similar to those that he teachers were learning.

“This stuff will save your life…. We want to make sure everyone is CPR trained, and we’re doing the AED – we’re doing everything we can do so that if the worst case happens that these guys have a little knowledge to maybe save somebody’s life,” Dobson said.