Maj. Camilla Swain, a proponency officer at the Financial Management School, takes the Arm Immersion Cooling System challenge during the Safety Symposium April 17 at the Solomon Center. Swain and others dipped their arms in a tank of ice cold water t...

Maj. Camilla Swain, proponency officer for the Financial Management School, shivers after taking the Arm Immersion Cooling System challenge during the Safety Symposium April 17 at the Solomon Center. She is also having her temperature taken to see h...

Safety was the theme at the Solomon Center April 17 as both on and off post safety experts gathered to show the Fort Jackson community ways to protect themselves.

"We are promoting safety throughout the community," said Robert Forshee, a safety officer with Fort Jackson's Safety Office. "We have off-post people plus on-post people that came together to share safety ideas."

Safety experts from across the Midlands including the S.C. Highway Patrol with their car rollover demonstration, and even an on-post Explosive Ordnance Disposal team was there.

Attendees like Delicia McCain, from the Oliver Dental Clinic, were able to interact with exhibits like driving a peddle car with special googles impairing their vision and cooling themselves off in the Arm Immersion Cooling System challenge.

"It's pretty informative. I am learning a lot. I am definitely learning about" the effect that drinking and smoking marijuana has on people while driving, McCain said after finishing her turn driving and wearing the impaired driving goggles. "I learned a lot information. Things I didn't know about."

Driving the peddle cars with impaired vision was tough, she said.

"It was actually very blurry," she added. "It's extremely blurry. I couldn't really see because everything was double vision. I could see two of everything."

Maj. Camilla Swain, a proponency officer at the Financial Management School who dunked her forearms in ice cold water as part of the AICS challenge, found the symposium to be a great way to learn about safety.

The AICS is a way to rapidly lower one's body temperature by immersing their forearms in cold water.

"I think it's great," she said. "It basically shows and gives you information in a one-stop shop. It allows you to see different things that you may have not seen before … You may pass it by and never knew that it was important to you."

The symposium is a great way to reach the Fort Jackson community members, McCain said.

"This is a training post," she said. "It's important for the cadre, it's important for the civilians that we understand and pay attention to safety."

It also has helped lower safety incidents across the post too.

"We do this every year at the safety office and our accidents are going down every year," Forshee said. "Getting everyone in a centrally located area has done really good."

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