Rescue team honored for heroism

Three Goodwill firefighters and the chief of the company's rescue operation were honored Wednesday night for the role they played in a "once-in-a-lifetime" rescue operation that began after two men fell through a hole that opened up in a roof being repaired at The Hill School last year.

Firefighters Terry Bechtel, Matt Burfete and William Smale Jr. were presented with Exceptional Duty Awards and Kevin Yerger, chief of Fire Rescue Operations for Goodwill Fire Company was presented with a plaque for his leadership during that operation.

It was a day with beautiful blue sky when the emergency call went out Nov. 1, 2010,

for two men who had fallen through the roof of The Hill School power plant.

"What units found when they arrived was nearly unthinkable," Yerger wrote in a Jan. 24 letter to Pottstown Fire Chief Richard Lengel, nominating the three members of his team for recognition.

"First, crews ascended a 40-foot tall utility ladder" that led to a platform where a conveyor belt, once used to carry coal into a coal hopper suspended about 30 feet in the air, was located.

The hopper was once used to fuel a furnace which provided heat and steam for other Hill School buildings but was no longer in use.

About 20 feet wide, 60 feet long and 18 feet deep, the hopper was where the crews found Kevin Sensenig, vice president of the R. L. Sensenig Co. of Ephrata, who had fallen through a hole that had opened up in the roof his company was there to repair.

The other victim, a worker who was wearing a safety harness, had fallen half the 35-foot distance from the roof into the hopper and was "standing on an 8-inch wide, deteriorating steel beam," according to Yerger's letter.

"He was in extreme pain and was not able to perform any type of self-rescue efforts," Yerger wrote.

Smale "crawled on an extension ladder" and then "along the beam to the victim and managed to get himself in a standing position next to the victim. While balancing on the beam, he was able to get one of our harnesses onto the victim," Yerger wrote.

Bechtel and Burfete "devised a system and lowered both firefighter Smale and the victim to the floor where advanced life support and emergency medical service treatment could be initiated," he wrote.

Sensenig's body was extracted by putting it into a "Stokes basket" and "using the crane system that the roofing company had in place to lift the victim through the collapsed section of roof and out of the building and down to the street."

Smale "climbed where few others would go" and Bechtel "remained at the side of the victim during the extrication and despite his own fear of heights, assured and reassured the victim that he would be OK," Yerger wrote.

"This call was 'the big one.' It is the one that we all train for and hope will never happen and after the call," Yerger wrote, "it was agreed upon that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

In an e-mail to The Mercury, Yerger was quick to point out that the success of the operation was due to many others as well.

The rescue "was a combined effort of the Pottstown Fire Department, Pottstown Police Department and Goodwill Ambulance."

"Every one of these operations has a few people who end up being the heart of the operation. This could be a person on the nozzle of the hose at the scene of a fire, the person who uses the hydraulic tool at the scene of a vehicle extrication or the guy who gets to accompany the victim during his 100-foot high ride out a three-story high coal bin," Yerger wrote.

Those honored Wednesday "stood out as stars that day and never at any point did I doubt their skills, their responsibilities of the job at hand," he wrote The Mercury.

"Through their expertise and professionalism, (Sensenig) was recovered in a very dignified manner," Lengel said when presenting the awards Wednesday during a meeting of Pottstown Borough Council.

Their conduct, Lengel said, "reflected very greatly on themselves and the department in their expertise, their knowledge and their ability to function under pressure."

With the exception of Life Safety Awards, the Exceptional Duty Awards for the Pottstown Fire Department are given out, if at all, only once a year in conjunction with Fire Prevention Week, which begins tomorrow.

Yerger's Jan. 24 nomination of Burfete, Smale and Bechtel was taken to the Borough Fire Committee, made up of the fire officers of each of the four fire companies in Pottstown.

It was their decision to present the award.

In a post on The Mercury's Facebook page, Smale explained that Yerger's plaque was presented to recognize "his outstanding leadership during The Hill School technical rescue operation."