EHS would like to congratulate and recognize Kim Benjamin as an EHS Safety Ambassador for her smart thinking and quick action in extinguishing a fire in the Physiological Research Laboratory (PRL).

In November, 2015, while she was conducting a PRL orientation with new students, Kim was approached by a student who needed help extinguishing a fire in an instrument lab.  She quickly grabbed an extinguisher in the hallway, entered the room, saw the high flames and instinctively extinguished the fire.  The fire was located in a room with more than a half a million dollars of equipment, five compressed gas cylinders of oxygen, and a butane tank.  Kim’s actions truly saved the day since the fire could have easily caused significant damage had she not stepped in.

Q: What was going through your mind when you responded to the fire?

A: I knew I just had to take care of it and went into response mode. Sometimes you just have to focus on what has to happen.

Q: What gave you the confidence to put out the fire?

A: I took the CERT training and learned how to use and practiced using a fire extinguisher but this was the first fire I put out in real life. All of the PRL employees are CERT trained but I’d like to work on practicing these skills with our team on a regular basis.

To learn more about the Campus Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, visit the Georgia Tech CERT website.