CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - A new partnership is exploring ways to provide hands-on training to rural fire departments and EMTs that they might not otherwise receive.

Wellmark Foundation has announced a 5-year partnership with SIM Iowa to provide funding so SIM Iowa’s mobile training unit can travel to almost every county. Its access to many rural departments would otherwise be limited.

SIM Iowa has three mobile trucks with mannequins. Those life-like mannequins can talk, bleed, and groan in pain. It’s a way to give rural departments a real taste of what they might see when they respond.

“It has a tourniquet that looks like he is bleeding, and bleeding heavily,” said Verna Kuehl.

Kuehl is now the EMS Captain and has served on the Alburnett Fire Department for 32 years. She knows the st

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