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Members of the Claremore Fire Department stand with the Oklahoma Blood Institute Boots and Badges traveling trophy. Pictured from left to right: Red Crown Credit Union Vice President of Marketing Jeremy Daggs, Nicholas Schrader, Cory Conner, Brandon McClaim and Oklahoma Blood Institute Senior Account Manager Susan Addison.

Members of the Claremore Fire Department stand with the Oklahoma Blood Institute Boots and Badges traveling trophy. Pictured from left to right: Red Crown Credit Union Vice President of Marketing Jeremy Daggs, Nicholas Schrader, Cory Conner, Brandon McClaim and Oklahoma Blood Institute Senior Account Manager Susan Addison.

Claremore Fire Department are the new Claremore Boots and Badges Blood Drive champions.

Oklahoma Blood Institute hosted the community challenge last week, and each blood donor got to vote for the department they wanted to see win the challenge. The Claremore Fire Department bested the Claremore Police Department 62 to 33.

“Another great Claremore Boots & Badges in the books,” said Senior Account Manager Susan Addison of Oklahoma Blood Institute. “This year’s record heat didn’t stop Claremore area residents coming out to support local first responders by donating blood during the difficult summer months.”

Every day, Oklahoma Blood Institute needs 1,200 blood donations to meet local needs. One blood donation only takes about an hour and saves up to three patients’ lives. This blood drive resulted in 83 blood donations, that can impact up to 249 local lives.

As the nation’s 6th largest nonprofit blood collector, Oklahoma Blood Institute’s blood donors provide every drop of blood needed for patients in more than 160 hospitals statewide, including Claremore Indian Hospital and Air Evac Claremore.

The Fire Department received $1,000 that will go toward their smoke alarm program and will get to display the traveling Oklahoma Blood Institute trophy this year.

Fire Chief Sean Douglas said there's always fun competition between the department and it felt good to win.

“It’s always nice to win,” Douglas said. “We’ll put it to good use.”

Douglas said the money will be used to continue to procure smoke alarms and install them in the homes of local residents. While some smoke alarms are either donated or purchased at a discount, Douglas said this money will allow the department to look at specialty alarms created for people with vision or hearing disabilities.

In 2020, 21 smoke alarms were installed – a number Douglas said was lower because of COVID. In 2019, 61 alarms were installed and over 110 were installed in 2018.

Douglas said the residential death rate is lower in homes that have smoke alarms installed.

“It’s fairly easy to take care of that and change the outcome,” he said.

He said most common problems he sees include removing the battery or smoke detectors installed in the wrong spot.

Anyone interested in having a smoke alarm installed can call (918) 341-1477.

First time blood donor with Oklahoma Blood Institute Melodie Blevins, of Claremore, also won a $500 VISA gift card courtesy of Red Crown Credit Union.

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