Myron C. Tucker, Sr., 38, maintenance man, saved an indeterminate number of persons from burning, Corinth, New York, November 30, 1964. In a utility room on the first floor of a two-story frame hospital, Tucker was checking an oxygen tank which weighed 90 pounds and stood on a three-wheeled truck. A loud hissing occurred at a gauge atop the tank, and escaping oxygen under 2200 pounds of pressure caught fire. Tucker grasped the truck by the handle and pushed it out of the room, intending to remove it from the building. The truck toppled onto its side. Tucker beat at flames on the front of his sweater. Fear that the cylinder might explode, endangering patients and staff members, Tucker raised the truck onto its wheels. Flames then issued five to six inches from a tubular extension atop the tank. Despite the intense heat and burns he sustained, Tucker pushed the truck a 100 feet through the hospital corridors to an outside door and thence to 30 feet from the building, where he left it and ran back into the hospital. His face and neck were inflamed, and the front of his sweater and shirt had burned away. Tucker had suffered extensive burns to his hands, chest, neck, and face. He was hospitalized for six weeks, recuperated, and recovered with limited use of one hand.
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