By Tony LaRussa
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PENN HILLS, Pa. — When the snowfall started to intensify the night of Feb. 5, Penn Hills volunteer firefighters Chris Porter and Steve Turpin figured there was no better place to be than the fire station.
Still, the pair had a mostly uneventful night until they were asked to accompany an ambulance on its calls.
“We were basically out in our truck following the ambulance to make sure it didn’t get stuck,” said Turpin, 24, a Marine sergeant who has been home about seven months from his second tour of combat duty in Iraq.
At about 3 a.m. Feb. 6, a call came in about a fire along Grandview Avenue with possible injuries.
“When we got there we were at the top of a steep hill, and the snow was so heavy you couldn’t even see the smoke from the fire,” said Porter, 30, who works at U.S. Steel’s Clairton Plant. They left the ambulance at the top of the hill while they drove their truck down to investigate.
The two men encountered a chaotic scene with an elderly woman lying in the front yard of her home, and her grandson, who is in his 20s, at a neighbor’s house with burns to his face and hands.
Unsure if anybody else was inside, Porter kicked open a rear door as Turpin checked the front while medic Pam Edwards tended to the patients. The two firefighters encountered heavy smoke and fire in the building, which eventually was destroyed.
Fire trucks and personnel that arrived on scene became stuck in the snow, leaving Porter and Turpin’s fire truck stranded.
“The snow was so deep that we couldn’t bring the victims up the hill with a vehicle or a chair carry,” said Turpin. A chair carry is a rescue technique that involves four people holding arms and legs to move someone.
Without giving it a thought, they hoisted the woman and her grandson on their shoulders and trudged about 300 feet up the hill in knee-deep snow.
“My only thought was to get them out of there,” said Porter. “It felt like my lungs would explode, but I kept going until I reached the ambulance.”
Turpin, who carried soldiers wearing 100 pounds of body armor while in Iraq, said he was confident he could handle the young burn victim, “but the snow made it a thousand times tougher,” he said.
Rather than heading home after the ordeal, the two men joined scores of other firefighters, police and medics helping people deal with the storm. They were finally ordered to go home on Sunday afternoon.
“These two young men went above and beyond what anybody would have expected of them,” said their chief, Al Wickline. “They’re perfect examples of the kind of people we have volunteering in all our fire departments.”
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