The Milford Fire Department has been recognized for its response and performance to cardiac arrest calls.

Firefighters, who also worked as EMS workers, are beating national response time averages because of new training and technology.

With cardiac arrests, the department got pulses back 47% of the time, with 39% admitted to a hospital. The national average is 24%.

Crews responded to 15 heart attack calls last year, with 87% of people discharged with a favorable diagnosis and all but one was discharged home.

The department uses a machine called Lucas that allows for consistent and controlled CPR that does not stop while a patient is being carried downstairs or loaded into an ambulance.

"That piece of equipment alone has saved countless lives. We are not losing that prime. We're constantly getting that oxygenated blood out to the brain, out to the other vital organs," says battalion chief Adam Hansen.

In just six months, the average time from 12-lead ECG to activation has gone down from 11 minutes to one minute.

Hansen says crews are constantly training and going over how to use a BVM, how to breathe for somebody and how to put on electrocardiograms.

Firefighters say although they have been acknowledged by Milford and Bridgeport hospitals, it's all in a day's work. Hasen tells News 12 the department takes pride knowing people are alive because of their paramedics and EMTs.

"Staying cool under pressure. We're going to people in their darkest hour, on their worst day of their lives, and our members have the training and they're able to push all of that stress aside, focus on the task at hand. And you see it in their in the results that we just talked about, that we're giving a good quality of care and we're giving people a better chance for survival," says Hansen.