LAWTON, Okla. (AP) — For Jack Eardman, rescuing three injured firefighters from a blazing grain bin full of soybeans isn't heroic — it's his job.
Eardman returned to his duties as assistant fire chief at the Hobart Fire Department on Thursday, less than two weeks after the fire, which led to the death of Hydro fire Chief Nolan Schmidt.
"A fireman's a fireman," Eardman, 40, said. "I was just doing what any other fireman would do for me."
That day, March 23, Eardman actually was freelancing for the ambulance service in Weatherford. Medics heard a call over the radio for help with a grain bin fire.
"On the way back we heard them tone out the ambulance to Hydro," Eardman said. "So we went over there and waited for about five, six minutes, before they hollered at us and said they needed us, that they had a fireman down.
"We went over there to them, and by that time they said they had four firefighters down."
Dressed in his medic scrubs and a pair of leather gloves, Eardman scaled the 40-foot ladder on the outside of the grain bin with some portable oxygen bottles in tow.
"My initial thought was we need to get in there to them," he said. "From the top I could see the firemen and hear the PASS devices going off."
A PASS (Personal Alert Safety System) device emits a loud alert when a firefighter stops moving or is otherwise in distress. Eardman recalled a haze of carbon monoxide slowly filling up the bin as he rushed in to help.
"I just immediately went in," he said. "And it was just deafening in there."
Eardman said he checked the pulse of the four fallen firefighters: two had regular pulses, one had a faint pulse and the fourth — Schmidt — was already gone.
"At that point you kind of have to go into triage mode," Eardman said.
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