Collinsville Police, Fire Departments Host Annual Boots & Badges Blood Drive

The Collinsville Police and Fire Department are hosting their annual Boots and Badges Blood Drive. It's a fun competition between the two departments, but also helps out Oklahoma with a big issue: a shortage of blood.

The city is working with 'Our Blood Institute' to host the drive, because Oklahoma is about 1,200 units of blood short of where it needs to be when it comes to supplying hospitals and emergency rooms. This means that elective surgeries could be delayed if there isn't enough blood that gets donated.

The Father's Day storms also could have had a negative impact on recent donations because of the widespread power outages in the week that followed.

"When you have something like that in an area like Tulsa where such massive amounts of places are without power, there was probably blood drives set up to happen in Tulsa during that time that could not happen because there’s no power," Matthew Burke, Collinsville Chief of Police said.

While the storm didn't cause many serious injuries in Collinsville, low blood supply still has a bigger impact on the community as a whole.

"The hospitals are always going to keep a certain amount of blood on hand for emergencies, emergency rooms, things like that. So, when they get low on blood, they start having to delay the elective surgeries, the surgeries that can be pushed back, things like that that are not of an emergency nature," Burke said.

The blood drive will take place in the Veterans Building and go from noon to 6 p.m. on June 29th. You can register for a time to donate blood online or walk in and donate.