MARSHALL, Ill. (WCIA) — It’s National Farm Safety and Health Week, and farmers in one Central Illinois city learned life-saving skills.

On Tuesday, farmers in Marshall took a break from the fields to learn how to keep themselves, and others, safe.

Clark County Farm Bureau, Clark County Ambulance Service, and Country Financial teamed up to host “Tourniquet in Every Tractor.” Their goal was to give tourniquets to farmers for each piece of equipment they have and show them how to use one.

“Well, you know, guys never think that something’s going to happen on the farm,” the President at the Clark County Farm Bureau, John Yieley, said.

And that’s why an event like the one they helped host is so important. The ambulance service said that it came out of a necessity.

“We saw an area that needed improvement was agricultural safety,” Chace Bramlett, the director of Clark County Ambulance Service, said.

Yieley agrees.

“In an emergency situation, it’s usually, you’re by yourself, and you need to be able to take care of that problem yourself until help arrives,” Yieley said.

He added that being in a rural community, it can take up to twenty minutes for an ambulance to arrive to a field.

“Those are crucial amounts of time,” Yieley said.

Bramlett shared that there wasn’t a program that trained farmers how to treat themselves in an emergency situation. So, he said that knowing how to use a tourniquet is critical and could be life-saving.

“The number one cause of death after a major injury is uncontrolled bleeding. If we can control the bleeding, then the worst day of their life, doesn’t have to be the last day of their life,” Bramlett said.

Yieley doesn’t just work for the farm bureau, he’s a farmer himself. He sees farm safety week, not just as a chance to raise awareness, but as a call to action.

“People don’t think that it’ll happen to them, and it can be something you’ve done 1,000 times, and that 1,001st time, it can kill you,” Yieley said.

Unfortunately, he knows it all too well.

“I’ve had an incident on my farm before, where a person lost their life,” Yieley shared.

For farmers like him, personal loss is a reminder, farm safety training is essential. Because behind every tractor, is a farmer and behind this training, a life could be saved.