Fire chief calls trash collector a hero
Published: January 12, 2007
A Rumpke driver is being credited with saving the lives of an elderly couple.
David Meade was picking up garbage at the Paris Court mobile home park north of Piqua about 12:30 a.m. Thursday when he smelled smoke.
Searching the park on County Road 25A, he saw flames shooting out from underneath a mobile home.
“I pounded on the door and told the owner he had to get out right now. This was not a small fire,” the 33-year-old Ansonia man said. “Once we got his wife out, I ran back to the truck and grabbed a fire extinguisher.
“The whole underneath of the house was on fire.”
Meade pulled the skirting off from the front of the home and began knocking down the flames with the fire extinguisher.
“He bought us enough time,” said Scott Pence, chief of the Fletcher Volunteer Fire Department.
Pence, who lives about one-quarter mile from the fire, was the first to arrive ahead of the fire trucks. Using a shovel, he continued to battle the flames as Meade’s extinguisher emptied.
Between the two of them, they kept the flames from spreading until fire trucks arrived.
Pence said an apparent electrical short ignited plastic and insulation under the home. He said the trailer was only minutes from igniting. Damage to the inside appeared minimal. There was no word on where the couple was Thursday night.
Pence said there was no smoke detector in the home. “He saved those people’s lives,” Pence said. “Thank God for people like him.”
Meade, who has worked for Rumpke 10 years, said, “I just did what I thought was right.”
He is the only area driver with a night route.
“He told me,” Pence said, ” ‘I knew there was a reason I went to church last night.’ “
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