Inspired by AMED ambulance workers saving a pair of dogs overcome by smoke in a 2022 city fire, a local businessman recently donated seven kits containing oxygen masks for pets, according to officials at an AMED board meeting this week.
Matt Wagner, owner of Invisible Fence of Central Pennsylvania, made the donations, which will take the number of ambulances equipped with pet-style masks in AMED’s fleet of 17 from one to eight.
AMED would welcome donations to equip the remaining nine vehicles, said AMED Executive Director Gary Watters on Tuesday.
The kits cost from $80 to $90 each, Watters estimated.
They each contain several sizes, so there are masks for both dogs and cats, he said.
Unlike oxygen masks for people, they are reused, Watters said.
In answering fire calls, AMED often encounters pets in distress from smoke inhalation, Watters said.
Most are unconscious as a result of carbon monoxide, which ends up taking the place of oxygen in the hemoglobin in the blood that normally carries oxygen to the organs, according to Watters and information on the internet.
Administering “high-flow” pure oxygen can help revive victims better than breathing the air, which has only 21% oxygen, because it can help displace the carbon monoxide more quickly, as breathing occurs, according to Watters.
Animals tend to bounce back better than people in such conditions, including those that aren’t breathing when firefighters bring them out, he said, but sometimes pets are too far gone.
At the 2022 fire, in which a person was killed, firefighters brought the two dogs out onto a porch, where emergency medical technicians revived them, Watters said.
Wagner didn’t return messages from the Mirror left on his business phone.
MIrror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.
