It wasn’t long after Joseph Andrew Stack III’s horrible act of cowardice, crashing a plane into an Austin, Texas, office building containing over 200 IRS employees, for first responders to arrive on the scene. When they got there, they found a guy who, by day, replaces broken windows. Robin Dehaven, a veteran of the Iraq war who spent 6 1/2 years in the US Army, was driving to a replacement job when he saw the plane crash and knew he had to help. So he drove to the building, saw people trapped on the second floor, and did what he had to do. He used the ladders on his truck and rescued people from within the burning building.
Said Dehaven to CNN, “I’ve had some experience in triage and battlefield, with … gunfire,” he said. “My first thought [was] maybe I can help, because I’m more used to dealing with traumatic situations like that.” He used his ladders to help five people trapped in the building to escape, saving their lives after smashing the window and climbing into the burning office to help them down, long before first responders could arrive and fight the blaze.
Thanks to the actions of him and others on the scene, what could have been a massive act of terrorism became mostly an inconvenience. Despite the plane crash and fire, only two bodies have been recovered from the plane wreck, one of them believed to be Stack’s. His intended targets appear to have escaped unharmed.
Tags: Austin, Texas, small plane crash in Austin, Joseph Andrew Stack III, Robin Dehaven, glass repairman becomes hero, lifesavers, heroism, stories of survival
