By FireRescue1 staff
RUDD, Iowa — A volunteer firefighter is being lauded for braving severe weather to keep a tornado siren blaring during an intense storm last week.
As the storm roared through Rudd, Iowa, Tyler Hicks manually sounded the town’s tornado siren to warn residents, KIMT3 reported.
“I was mainly just thinking, ‘I don’t want anybody to get hurt,’ you know, I signed up to do this, and that was my job that night,” Hicks said.
https://twitter.com/kwtx/status/1473375242341040135
Hicks described the harrowing night: “I just kept holding the button, and then the next thing you know, it’s raining sideways, all that kind of stuff, and I’m still holding the button. … and next thing you know, there’s no button there anymore to pull down.”
He continued: “I could hear, as I was holding the siren, the tin being ripped off of some buildings, and I actually heard some wood being splintered and stuff. And it actually, that ended up actually being the pole.”
Hicks then took cover in the fire truck.
After the storm subsided a bit, Hicks realized the pole was gone. He later found it a couple blocks away.
“I’m really just glad that nobody got hurt,” Hicks said.