DOVER-FOXCROFT – Elvira Hobart of Blanchard placed her fingers strategically on the chest of the doll she cradled in her arms.

Placing her mouth over the small opening on the doll’s face, the SAD 68 school bus driver alternately blew air into the doll while gently thumping its chest cavity. Other bus drivers watched her intently.

Had this been a child on her bus route, Hobart’s actions might have meant life instead of death. Although she and other bus drivers in the region have not yet faced such emergency situations, they know it is possible and they want to be fully prepared.

So Hobart and 31 other bus drivers from Union 60 in Greenville, SAD 4 in Guilford and SAD 68 in Dover-Foxcroft gathered Monday for emergency medical training that would equip them with the skills needed to save a life.

“These people are dedicated,” SAD 4 Transportation Supervisor David Cotta said Monday, of the school bus drivers.

“I think many times they’re [school bus drivers] overlooked in the scenario of school,” said Jenny Chase, SAD 68 transportation supervisor and a coordinator of Monday’s session. She said the bus drivers are the first and last school personnel to see the children each school day.

People tend to take it for granted that their children will get to school and back home safe, Chase said.

“It’s a part-time job with a full-time responsibility,” Chase remarked, during a break in the training. Even after delivering the children home after school, school bus drivers don’t stop thinking about them, she said. They file reports, deliver book bags that may have been left behind on the bus, and report discipline problems to parents and principals. But the work is rewarding, she noted.

And while bus drivers are responsible for the care of the youngsters on the buses, many have had no medical training because state law does not require it. Some school districts, however, such as SAD 4, make such training mandatory. Aside from a good driving record, bus drivers must have a physical each year, submit to random drug testing, be fingerprinted and must participate in constant training sessions.

Chase said she and other transportation supervisors in the region played the “what if” game, asking themselves how well their drivers were trained in emergency situations. The responses to that question were troubling. No one was trained for a real emergency.

That’s when the supervisors decided to refresh those drivers who have been trained to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation and to teach others the lifesaving skills. In addition to this week’s session, supervisors plan to conduct a small-scale emergency exercise in Dover-Foxcroft in November in anticipation of a larger-scale emergency exercise tentatively planned for June 2002 in Guilford and another in Milo. The exercise in Guilford probably will involve a bus that has rolled over and caught fire and the Milo event likely will involve a train.

“It’s going to be a good practice for everybody,” Cotta said, including Mayo Regional Hospital Ambulance personnel, who provided the training for Monday’s session, the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department, local fire departments and the schools.

For Brian Mullis, emergency medical services director at Mayo, the cooperative training with the schools is a win-win situation. His employees get a chance to teach, which improves their skills and confidence in the field, and it provides necessary training to bus drivers. “I want to know that whoever is behind the wheel of the school bus knows what to do if something goes wrong,” he said.

Chase, too, was pleased with the training. “I think it’s a chance for them [bus drivers] to act instead of react and panic.”