Volunteer Fire Department Association postpones golf tourney for Leon S. Peters Burn Center

Updated 3 years ago By Ed Martin, Editor

The Lemoore Volunteer Fire Department Association is postponing its charity golf tournament benefitting the Leon S. Peters Burn Center due to issues with the coronavirus pandemic.

The Lemoore volunteers had planned to raise money to assist burn victims and decided to sponsor an annual charity golf tournament benefitting the Leon S. Peters Burn Center located at the Fresno Community Regional Medical Center.

The golf tournament was scheduled for Monday, April 27, 2020, at the Kings Country Club, located in Laton, at 3529 12th Avenue. Generally, most if not all golf courses have been closed due to COVID-19. 

And the reasons for the volunteers’ new initiative hits close to home.

According to local firefighters, Kings County had the most significant number of burn victims per capita in the Central Valley. Valley-wide, many of the burn victims are children, and because a large number of burn victims are from Kings County, the local volunteers decided to support local victims and the burn center.

The Leon S. Peters Burn Center is the only ‘round-the-clock” comprehensive burn center between Los Angeles and Sacramento. It treats patients within 15,000 square miles, an area almost as big as Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey combined. And it’s all done at the Fresno Community Regional Medical Center.

The burn center has comprehensive and intensive care services as well as state-of-the-art programs for inpatient and outpatient burn rehabilitation. The “burn team”  includes every type of medical care from trained nurses and physicians to social works and respiratory care practitioners.

The center also has a “Child Life Program” that helps children and families overcome life’s most challenging events, assisting children to cope with the stressful experience of being burned.

Burn injuries are one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death for children in the Central Valley. Most children treated at the Leon S. Peters Burn Center were scalded by hot liquids related to cooking.

“Fresno is the only one (burn center) located in the San Joaquin Valley,” said Lemoore Volunteer Fire Chief Bruce German. “There are only three burn trauma centers in the state of California, in Fresno, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.”

The local Lemoore Volunteer Fire Department Association, because of the county’s connection to the burn center, has decided to support the burn center with a local golf tournament.

“Kings County, from the top of the San Joaquin Valley to the South Valley, has the most burn victims per capita,” said German. “There was no hesitation from anybody (in the department),” he said. “Let’s absolutely do this.”

 

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