Twenty-six-year-old Iraq war veteran and Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) union member Robin De Haven rescued five people from the burning Austin, Texas building after a man crashed his plane Thursday into the local offices of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The man had a long-running tax dispute with the IRS.
The story about the rescue was posted on the blog of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
De Haven was driving to work when he spotted the single-engine plane heading toward the building. According to an interview with Fox News, when he looked again he saw black smoke billowing from the second story of the building.
“I immediately drove my truck over there, got the ladder off, went up to the side of the building and I saw people up on the second floor with their heads out the window for air because the room was filled with smoke,” said De Haven in the interview.
He positioned the 17-foot ladder to reach as far as it could to the second floor. When the people in the building could not secure the ladder to safely climb down, De Haven went up. “I climbed inside the broken-out window into the building with them,” he said.
Together with one of the men inside, he then broke another window near a ledge, and secured the ladder so he could get the five people out safely. “I held onto their waists and their backs so they wouldn’t fall if they slipped. … I don’t feel like a hero. I was just trying to help.”
The story about the rescue was posted on the blog of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
De Haven was driving to work when he spotted the single-engine plane heading toward the building. According to an interview with Fox News, when he looked again he saw black smoke billowing from the second story of the building.
“I immediately drove my truck over there, got the ladder off, went up to the side of the building and I saw people up on the second floor with their heads out the window for air because the room was filled with smoke,” said De Haven in the interview.
He positioned the 17-foot ladder to reach as far as it could to the second floor. When the people in the building could not secure the ladder to safely climb down, De Haven went up. “I climbed inside the broken-out window into the building with them,” he said.
Together with one of the men inside, he then broke another window near a ledge, and secured the ladder so he could get the five people out safely. “I held onto their waists and their backs so they wouldn’t fall if they slipped. … I don’t feel like a hero. I was just trying to help.”
