A Tale of Four Heroes

PORT JERVIS & ITHACA, NEW YORK

For people who aren't firefighters or EMTs, public service doesn't often involve saving the occupants of a burning house or the driver or an overturned vehicle. But that's what it meant recently for two pairs of workers who belong to the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000.

• Port Jervis Public Works employees Bob Stempert and Chris Banghart were nearing the end of a tiring, 16-hour shift dumping snow when things really began to heat up. 
  The two men saw smoke rising from a house in the Riverside neighborhood of this small city, located at the junction of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. According to CSEA's The Work Force, they rushed over in their snowplow, blowing its air horn as a distress signal.

Told by a neighbor that the burning house was unoccupied, Stempert and Banghart went to one next door that was about to catch fire. Coincidentally, that house belonged to a retired public works employee they used to work with. "I opened the door," Stempert recalls, "and just started yelling, 'Your house is on fire! Get out!'"

The homeowner and an adult son were roused from their sleep, but in their drowsy confusion, wouldn't leave. The homeowner was scared, says Banghart. "I got him some clothes and shoes and took him out." The two rescuers remained to help arriving firefighters and public-works colleagues who later joined them. The blaze destroyed both homes.

• Tim Haire and Lois Marshall are members of a two-person municipal sign crew in Ithaca. Haire was driving to work when he spotted a knocked-over sign. He reported his find and returned with Marshall, who supervises the sign crew.
  The two were replacing the sign when Haire noticed tire tracks running along the road bank — and onto the wrong side of the guardrail. Looking down, he saw a pickup truck lying on its roof. "Is anybody in there?" he hollered.

"Help me! I'm up here!" the driver responded from a hill he had climbed to get help. Marshall called 911, then hurried to flag down a rescue crew. Haire went to the victim's aid. "He was conscious but lying down, and he was cold." No wonder: He had endured a night of 40-degree temperatures. When the EMTs arrived, they told Haire that — but for his rescue effort — the man might soon have died from hypothermia.