Fast-Acting IUPAT Member Rescues Five from IRS Plane Crash Attack
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Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) member Robin De Haven is being hailed as hero for his role in rescuing five people from the blazing Austin, Texas, building where a man with a vendetta against the Internal Revenue Service crashed his fuel-laden plane Thursday.
De Haven was on his way to work when he saw the single-engine plane, which witnesses say was at full throttle, heading toward the building. The IUPAT Local 1778 member told Fox News that when he looked again and saw black smoke pouring from the second story:
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.
The 26-year-old Iraq war veteran positioned the 17-foot ladder to reach as far as it could to the second floor. But when the people in the building were unable to secure the ladder so they could safely descend, De Haven scrambled up to them.
I climbed inside the broken-out window into the building with them. My ladder slipped a little bit actually.
