“Our technicians risked their lives on a moment’s notice to quickly douse the blaze to prevent more serious property damage and potential injuries or loss of life. Red Hawk Service Operations Manager Dave Hovater, who has been asked to attend the school board meeting honoring his technicians, says both technicians have had training and are familiar with the proper operation of fire extinguishers to contain small fires such as this. We are all very thankful that these men took it upon themselves to run toward the fire, work to put it out, alert our students and staff to evacuate the building and call in the professional firefighters. “When someone yells ‘Fire!’ most people run the opposite direction. “The quick action of the Red Hawk team and our chief custodian prevented what could have been a tragic outcome,” says Dan Voelpel, spokesman for Tacoma Public Schools. Feese then rushed back to the door of the boy’s restroom to help his teammate. He also instructed a school staff member to call 911 since, with the fire alarm on test, no emergency signal would have gone to firefighters. Since the fire alarm panel had been placed on bypass for the test, Feese immediately re-enabled the horn, strobes, fan shutdown and door release at the fire alarm panel to alert students and staff of the danger. “I opened the door to the boy’s restroom and could see only a dark wall of smoke,” says Cunningham, who grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher, pulled its pin, then took off his shirt wrapping it around his head to serve as an improvised mask to minimize inhaling the smoke as he crouched down and moved toward the fire.įeese rushed upstairs to see Cunningham running in the direction of the billowing smoke. He alerted his coworker and ran toward the source of the smoke. That’s when he heard a commotion in the hallway and a teacher yelling that there was a fire in the boy’s bathroom.
“Cunningham saw an alarm signal coming into the fire alarm control panel that was not in the area where he and his colleague were working. The following is an excerpt from Red Haw’s press release: Red Hawk Fire and Security Describes the Incident The incident unfolded March 7 while Red Hawk Technician Rick Feese, a journeyman electrician, and Apprentice Technician Josh Cunningham were performing scheduled maintenance on the fire alarm system at Tacoma’s Whitman Elementary School. Two Red Hawk Fire and Security technicians were recognized for their courageous actions by a Tacoma, Wash., elementary school after they prevented a potentially catastrophic fire from spreading until firefighters could arrive on scene. The following story originally ran in Campus Safety’s sister publication, Security Sales & Integration.
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