James F. Skidmore, 26, structural iron worker, helped to rescue Henry D. Moses, 24, grain elevator hand, and Cecil O. Evans, 26, grain weigher, from falling, Saginaw, Texas, February 23, 1943. At night, Moses and Evans suffered serious burns from a dust explosion in a grain elevator building, and they dropped 25 feet from a window of a section known as a headhouse to the roof of a part of the building that rose 100 feet above the ground. They were severely injured, and fire in the building beneath them prevented their escape from the roof. A ladder raised by firemen failed to reach the roof. No further effort being made to reach them, Skidmore had firemen place the ladder against a waterpipe 13 inches in diameter that extended up another side of the building to the roof, which was level with the roof on which the men were but which was blocked off by the headhouse, except for a ledge. Tying one end of a long, heavy rope around his waist, Skidmore went up the ladder and then climbed 30 feet up the pipe and got onto the roof. He worked his way along a ledge six inches to a foot wide at the side of the headhouse and went through a doorway into the headhouse, but fire and dense smoke caused him to go back to the doorway. Coiling his rope on the floor, he again got on the ledge and worked his way along it toward the men. The rope fell off the ledge, jerking at Skidmore’s waist, but he kept his holds and reached the roof and the men. James L. Needham, who meanwhile had climbed up the ladder and the waterpipe and had got through the headhouse, then reached him. Skidmore with the rope pulled a canvas sling to the roof, and with it he and Needham lowered Moses to the ground. Then by means of a stretcher tied to the rope they lowered Evans. The ladder was moved to a point below them, and Skidmore and then Needham descended to it on the rope, which was tied to a pipe. Moses and Evans recovered. 39795-3338
39795 – 3338
39795-3338