On Monday, Provo police and fire squared off for the second-annual American Red Cross Battle of the Badges Blood Drive, seeing which side could rally more community support to give blood.

Blood donors placed a red or blue ticket into a bin to choose which department they wanted to support. Whoever has the most at the end of the contest wins a large blood drive trophy. The fire department won in 2025 and are going for the repeat.

Aliza Eden, with the Red Cross, said one bag of blood can save up to three lives, and that the 94 people who signed up can save nearly 300 lives.

“This is the biggest blood drive I’ve had probably this whole year so far,” Eden said. “It was like this last year, too. It seems like it was a really big hit for the first year and this second year, too.”

The strong turnout is significant considering the degree of need for blood in the United States right now. Last month, the Red Cross declared the second-ever national blood supply crisis and urged people to make immediate blood donations.

The Red Cross said it is limiting distributions of type O blood to hospitals and that patients may already be feeling the consequences of the blood crisis.

According to Eden, Utah is the biggest blood-producing state, per capita, and shoulders a national load.

“There will be a couple of times a year when we’ll usually go into an appeal because we have just a couple day supply of blood,” she said. “We need to build it back up just because a lot of our blood from Utah goes out to other places.”