If it's happened to you, and most likely it has, then you know just what an awful, helpless feeling it is when your car battery dies on you. A dead battery can turn a good day into a challenging one - and affect your whole schedule.

As you barrel down the highway on your morning commute, you notice a stranded motorist on the side of the road with a flat tire and think boy, I’m sure glad that’s not me. But seeing that also makes you think, how can I avoid that being me next time? And am I prepared with what I need if it does happen?

This time of year, with darkness and weather, parents and students should think about safety. Here are a few quick reminders to think about before you head out the door: “Stay safe and be aware of your surroundings.”

We know that your firefighter turnout gear serves a distinct purpose – it must provide protection from a variety of factors you face each and every time you go out on a call. In order to do that, by nature that gear must be heavy and insulated.

When the call comes in and you rush to the scene of an accident or emergency, you never know exactly what you’ll encounter when you get there. That’s why, as a paramedic, you have to be ready for anything that comes your way. Your typical day could include anything from a simple sprain to a serious car accident or a mass shooting.

When it comes to your everyday life, taking proper care of your duty boots may not rank right up there with other high priorities. Perhaps you can’t thoroughly clean your boots every single day.

Medical gloves are a critical tool used by healthcare professionals to help prevent cross-contamination between patients and caregivers. They protect both patients and medical personnel against all manner of dangerous chemicals, bacteria, and viruses.

Winter is upon us, and for those of us who work in a cold-weather climate that means working in even tougher conditions than normal – snow piled to our knees, temperatures in the teens with wind chills in the single digits or below, icy roads and sidewalks. It also means different kinds of calls – falling through ice, space heater fires, frostbite, and hypothermia, just to name a few.

The most basic safety tips we can give are to know the rules of the road. Always run against traffic so you can see vehicles as they approach. This will help you react quickly to move out of the way if a vehicle is coming at you, where as if it’s approaching you from behind, your reaction time is greatly reduced.

Take a moment to picture this scenario. You find yourself in an unfortunate situation where you’ve been involved in a car accident. You’re OK, but you’ve sustained some injuries like cuts and scrapes, and one particular cut is bleeding pretty heavily.

Take a moment and picture this. It’s 2:30 a.m. and you’re the first responders on site to an active, blazing fire at a multi-unit apartment complex. You have no idea how many people are inside and can only assume that since it’s the middle of the night, there are many lives at stake.

The call comes in that there’s a house on fire in a nearby neighborhood. Possible victims inside. You and your team throw on your turnout gear and head out, sirens blaring. Your heart’s pumping, adrenaline flowing, but you’re ready because you’ve trained for this.

Ever since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999 shocked the country and the world, law enforcement experts and agencies have refocused their efforts to learn all they can about persons who become active shooters and how we can be prepared for those situations in order to either prevent them beforehand or stop them as quickly as possible to limit the number of casualties.

To many people selecting the best hard hat should be pretty simple.

Construction, industrial, at-height, utility, rescue, food production, and other workers electricians, welders, firefighters, and loggers – among others – need helmets as their first line of safety protection against possible head injuries on the job.