AECOM Donates Defibrillators and Emergency Lights to VI Fire Service for St. Thomas-St. John District

Virgin Islands Fire Service Director announced Wednesday during a press conference at the Omar Brown Sr. Fire Station that storm recovery supervising contractor AECOM made a generous donation of seven new automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) and seven sets of emergency lights to be distributed to the fire stations in the St. Thomas-St. John District.

“For a long time coming, the Fire Service has been on a path of enhancing our emergency response capability and becoming one of the better-equipped first-responder agencies in the Virgin Islands,” said VI Fire Service Director Daryl George. “As part of our ‘Change Course’ vision for 2020, it was a blessing that AECOM contacted me last week and said they wanted to donate some AEDs. This was a part of our vision that we never got to.”

According to Government House, AECOM Executive Director of Operations Pat Mitchell said the gift is part of the company’s mission of having a commitment to safety and giving back to the community.

“If we can help, we’re going to help. If there’s things to do on our off-time, we have folks volunteering all the time, helping out, doing whatever,” he said.

The AEDs were part of VI AECOM’s equipment that they had at every project site, and weren’t put to use, so the company donated some of the brand new units to the V.I. Fire Service,” Mr. Mitchell said.

AECOM bought the emergency lights to use on top of the modular units when they moved them to the various school sites during the night so as not to disrupt traffic, he said.

AECOM Industrial Safety and Health Manager Anon Miller said the AEDs walk a person through what to do in an emergency.

“So, even if you aren’t trained as a first-responder and someone goes down, these units will actually tell you exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it,” he said.

Mr. George said the new equipment supports Governor Albert Bryan Jr.’s vision to transform the Virgin Islands Fire Service into an all-hazard department.

“On the governor’s path of changing the course of the Virgin Islands, we have continued to upgrade,” the Fire Service director said. “So, today is a good day for me as the director of the Fire Service knowing that this was part of our vision, part of our plan, and AECOM came to the rescue. So, I’ll say to AECOM, ‘Thank you for changing the course of what we plan to do within the Virgin Islands Fire Service.”

Mr. George also noted during the press conference that St. Croix resident Cher Will, who was the Project Director of the AED Fund at the St. Croix Foundation, solicited enough community donations to put an AED in every station on St. Croix.