MARSHALL, Ill. (WCIA) — It’s National Farm Safety and Health Week, and farmers in one Central Illinois city learned life-saving skills.

On Tuesday, farmers in Marshall took a break from the fields to learn how to keep themselves, and others, safe.

The Clark County Farm Bureau, alongside the Clark County Ambulance Service and Country Financial, organized the initiative “Tourniquet in Every Tractor.” This event aimed to equip farmers with tourniquets for each piece of farming equipment and to provide them with the necessary training on how to effectively use one.

“Well, you know, guys never think that something’s going to happen on the farm,” the President at the Clark County Farm Bureau, John Yieley, said.

And that’s why an event like the one they helped host is so important. The ambulance service said that it came out of a necessity.

“We saw an area that needed improvement was agricultural safety,” Chace Bramlett, the director of Clark County Ambulance Service, said.

Yieley agrees.

In emergencies, farmers often find themselves alone, needing to manage the situation on their own until help arrives, as Yieley emphasized.

He added that being in a rural community, it can take up to twenty minutes for an ambulance to arrive to a field.

“Those are crucial amounts of time,” Yieley said.

Bramlett noted the absence of programs specifically training farmers to handle emergencies independently. He pointed out that understanding how to apply a tourniquet could be vital and potentially life-saving.

Bramlett stated, “Uncontrolled bleeding is the leading cause of death after a serious injury. By controlling the bleeding, we can ensure that the worst day of their lives doesn’t have to be their last.”

Beyond his role at the farm bureau, Yieley is also a farmer. To him, farm safety week is not merely about raising awareness; it’s a call for proactive measures.

Yieley remarked, “Many think it won’t happen to them, but even a routine task you’ve done countless times can become fatal the next time.”

Unfortunately, he knows it all too well.

“I’ve had an incident on my farm before, where a person lost their life,” Yieley shared.

For farmers like him, personal loss is a reminder, farm safety training is essential. Because behind every tractor, is a farmer and behind this training, a life could be saved.