Detective/Lt. Tim Sholander of the Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team talks about the agency during Wednesday’s forum on public safety at the Marquette Township Community Center. Other officials talked about fire safety, law enforcement and medical emergencies. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — Is your furniture fabric mainly synthetic? You might wish it were cotton after listening to speakers at the Wednesday public safety forum at the Marquette Township Community Center.

Officials from Superior Life Services, the Marquette Township Fire Department, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office and the Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team spoke at the forum to inform the public about their jobs and ways people can stay safe.

“It’s our job to promote and work toward the health, safety and welfare of the township residents and businesses,” township Supervisor Lyn Durant said.

Rob Sved, owner and instructor of Superior Life Services, specializes in first aid as well as CPR training.

He is a firm believer in AEDs, or automated external defibrillators, which help people experiencing sudden cardiac arrest.

“We should have one in probably every business that has (the) public coming through,” Sved said — and that particularly includes big box businesses with many people going in and out of their doors.

Sved discussed ways people can call 9-1-1, including texting. People with iPhones can set up location sharing as well as medical information and emergency contacts to aid in situations such as being found unresponsive on a bike path or in the woods.

When a cardiac arrest does occur, CPR can be crucial, he said, although that help doesn’t happen as often as it should.

“Currently, only 46 percent of people in the United States are willing to even attempt CPR,” Sved said. “That’s not very good. It’s not giving anybody a shot. You have to be at least willing to attempt. Most people are scared to try.”

However, he pointed out that for every minute a person goes without CPR, the chance of survival drops about 10%.

“So, CPR right away, and an AED as soon as you can, you got like a 90 percent chance of survival, which is huge,” Sved said.

Superior Life Services can be reached at www.SuperiorLiveServices.com, contact@SuperiorLifeServices.com or 906-360-2279.

MTFD Assistant Fire Chief Rob Cochran said that when he and MTFD Fire Chief Dan Shanahan first started firefighting, people had about 30 minutes to safely get out of a building. Now they have only 3¢ minutes, because of changes within buildings.

To demonstrate his point, Cochran showed a video comparing a legacy room with a modern room, and how fire spreads more quickly in the modern room with synthetic fabrics than earlier designed rooms.

So, devices such as smoke detectors are important, he said, and that means having one on every level, in every bedroom and one outside each sleeping area. People also should have an escape plan with a designated outside meeting place and not go back inside a structure after a blaze starts.

Cochran showed another video comparing the spread of a fire between a room with a door closed and a room with an open door. The closed-door room was far less damaged.

“Close before you doze,” he said, is the new mantra for such a scenario.

Cochran also addressed the importance of having carbon monoxide detectors and learning about lithium-ion battery safety. That involves not overcharging those batteries, not charging them on furniture and recycling them instead of discarding them in the trash.

Lithium-ion batteries aren’t inherently dangerous, but he noted, “We just need to understand how to use them.”

Marquette County Sheriff Greg Zyburt showed a recruiting video about the MCSD and its duties, but also mentioned a staffing issue.

“We foresee the next five years of being short-staffed,” he said. “Almost every agency in Michigan and the United States is short-staffed.”

The MCSD, he said, currently has 25 licensed and fully certified officers, including himself and Undersheriff Dan Willey, but it has lost 10 within the last year.

To address this staffing issue, Zyburt wrote a proposal for a $100,000 grant for recruiting and retention.

“In years past, if you wanted to become a police officer, you got your associate’s degree and then you get certified,” he said. “You put yourself through a police academy.”

This strategy had to be changed.

“Now agencies are paying the officer to go through the academy,” Zyburt said.

The purpose of the recruiting video, he said, is to bring would-be officers from downstate to the U.P. by showing them Marquette County attractions such as sled dog races and downhill skiing.

“It’s gotten a lot of attention,” he said of the video, which is sent to colleges in Michigan with criminal justice programs.

Zyburt recently was elected to his second term as chairman of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, which works to ensure public safety and support of the criminal justice community.

On Jan. 31, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill to fund in-service training for licensed officers, which includes $20 million in funding.

“We’re happy to get the money and get the training the officers need,” Zyburt said.

Detective/Lt. Tim Sholander of UPSET said the organization is composed of agencies from across the U.P., with teams in Marquette, Houghton, Sault Ste. Marie and Escanaba.

“One of the main drugs we’re dealing with right now is crystal meth,” Sholander said.

From a business standpoint, crystal methamphetamine is made from only chemicals, not from plants used in heroin, so a lot of it can be manufactured cheaply, he said.

What’s changed in the area, Sholander said, is the quantity of crystal meth, which now can be measured in pounds instead of ounces.

Sholander said an ounce of crystal meth will sell for about $250 to $350 in cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee, but in the U.P., buyers will pay $1,000 to $1,200 per ounce.

“There’s a huge market for people downstate that want to come up and make more money,” he said. “The good thing about that is that those people stand out and we are able to identify those people very quickly.”

Zyburt said anyone who suspects drug activity in their neighborhood can — carefully — write down license plate numbers, which will be sent to UPSET analysts.

Still, some people manage to use drugs, and their appearance shows the unfortunate effects. Sholander showed before-and-after photographs of such people to demonstrate how drug abuse prematurely ages people and, in some cases, causes them to pick at their faces, resulting in scabs.

“Ugly stuff,” he said.