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FAIRFIELD – Jefferson County Health Center in Fairfield hosted the EmpowerU Health and Wellness Fair on Saturday, Oct. 5 on a picture-perfect day that felt more like summer than fall.

The event featured 34 health and wellness vendors that shared information on nutrition, physical activity and senior care resources. Each one set up a booth along the walking trail southwest of the building. Vendors included businesses such as Impact Fitness, whose owners are renovating the former Winn Corp building on West Grimes and hope to move into it by the end of the year.

Jefferson County Health Center nurses ran a booth educating people about how to perform first-aid on a patient with severe bleeding. JCHC Nurse Paramedic Mike Sellers and JCHC Emergency Room Nurse Ashlea Horstman used life-sized models of legs with a cut to show how to pack the wound and tie a tourniquet around it to stop the bleeding. They handed out tourniquet kits, and encouraged people to visit stopthebleed.com to learn more.

One of the highlights of the morning was a demonstration of a live vehicle extraction. Local first responders positioned two cars in the parking lot as if they had just crashed into each other, and they had to remove a passenger from one of the vehicles.

First responders removed a real person from the car, put them on a gurney, and loaded them into an ambulance and then a helicopter from Air Evac Lifeteam, which had flown in for the event. Firefighters then took turns using the Jaws of Life-style extrication equipment to further cut up the cars, good practice for when they’ll need to do it for real.

Fairfield Fire Chief Brett Ferrel said Saturday’s demonstration included first responders from around the county. He said they try to practice these scenarios once a year. Ferrel was at Saturday’s health and wellness fair representing Jefferson County Emergency Management Association, and used the opportunity to pass out pamphlets on the county’s severe weather alert system. Ferrel estimated that about one-third of county residents have signed up for the alerts.