Fire and Rescue Institute reopens after tornado
By SARAH BRUMFIELD
Journal staff writer

``I still don't look at storms the same way."
F. Patrick Marlatt looked out the window at the driving rain and winds of a spring storm Friday remembering the tornado that took his two daughters in September and left him trapped and injured beneath a collapsed trailer.
Preparing people for disasters is the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute's goals, but that day Institute employees found themselves in the middle of one.
Marlatt, the institute's assistant director, was among those in attendance Friday at the opening of the institute's new building in College Park and spoke about the September tornado that ripped a path of devastation along Route 1.
The tornado's course through the Prince Georges' County went right through the institutes's temporary trailers on the other side of the University of Maryland's campus, crushing the trailers and trapping many employees and injuring seven, killing two - Marlatt's daughters.
Being a victim himself has changed the way he teaches life-saving techniques, he said.
``I will never see victims the same way," Marlatt said. He now knows firsthand just how much pressure well-meaning rescuers exert just walking across the remains of a collapsed building.
He had just seen off his daughters, Colleen, 23, and Erin, 20, in the parking lot. He told them to get home safely before the storm hit.
``I meant wind and rain, I didn't even think of a tornado," he said.
Winds lifted their car over the highrise dormitories along University Boulevard and into a wooded area, killing them both.
After an off-duty firefighter who happened to be driving past pulled Marlatt free of the debris under which he was trapped, Marlatt and his wife spent their time at the hospital wondering why they couldn't reach their daughters by phone.
``We both had some premonition that something wasn't right when the girls didn't call," he said. ``When I heard there were two students dead, I knew then. I just knew."
The institute didn't skip a beat, Marlatt said. Though its temporary space, furniture, computers and all working files were destroyed or badly damaged, classes scheduled for the next day went on as usual across the state and the nation, he said.
``All we could do was deal with it," said MFRI Director Steven Edwards. ``We were functional the next day. Our people pulled together and did what they needed to do."
They set up office space in a classroom with desks and data connections to keep up with the institute's obligation to firefighters around the state and country, Marlatt said.
``We had to survive," he said.
MFRI began as the Maryland Fire College in 1930 and is located on the University of Maryland's campus.
After the county's school system took back the space MFRI used at Berwyn Elementary School in a return to community schools they moved some employees to temporary trailers on campus.
Renovations to the institute's headquarters on Paint Branch Road are now complete, state officials and members of the fire service from around the state joined the institute for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday. The renovations update labs and classrooms for the nearly 30,000 students served each year.

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