Pillar of Pa. emergency services leaves legacy of compassion
ROBERT A. FULL | Oct. 15, 1954 - July 17, 2020
Robert A. Full, who started as a volunteer firefighter in Forest Hills and became a pillar of Pennsylvania’s emergency management system, learned early to make do during a crisis.
In April 1987, when two Conrail freight trains collided in Bloomfield and caused a toxic chemical to leak, he jury-rigged a solution. As officials evacuated 16,000 people from the area of the derailment, Mr. Full stuffed a tennis ball into the hole of the punctured tanker car and averted disaster.
Ray DiMichiei, Pittsburgh’s former EMS director, who was working in the city’s dispatch center that day, said Mr. Full never forgot his basic emergency training: Make do with what you have at hand.
“There was a wind shift; it was a mess,” Mr. DiMichiei said Saturday. “You use what you have. That’s what stopped the leak.”
Firefighter, paramedic, emergency management expert, Mr. Full died Friday after suffering what his wife said was an apparent heart attack Wednesday at his home in Swisshelm Park. He was 65.
Mr. Full is survived by Geraldine, his wife of 39 years, as well as a son, a daughter and three grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were incomplete as of Saturday.
Mr. Full was a Churchill High School graduate and lifelong volunteer firefighter in Forest Hills where he grew up. Since 2015, he had been working as a consultant to Washington, Pa.-based Specialized Professional Services Inc., a hazardous materials incident response company.
Hazardous material spills and biological, chemical and nuclear weapon preparedness were areas of special expertise for Mr. Full.
But there was another side to Mr. Full, family and friends said, one that guided his 45-year career in public service. That side was apparent early in his career as a paramedic, when an ironworker preparing the old Brady Street Bridge for demolition got his leg pinned by a shifting girder.
Efforts to free him failed. Allegheny General Hospital trauma surgeon Joseph Young was called to the scene.
In press photos that day, Mr. Full — 126 feet above the ground — is cradling Ralph Winner as Dr. Young amputated his leg, freeing him. Mr. Winner died in 2016 at age 87.
“I’ve never seen someone with so much compassion,” said Westmoreland County Public Safety Director Roland “Bud” Mertz, who worked under Mr. Full for three years when Mr. Full was chief deputy director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. “He would say, ‘This job is about the people you serve and not about you or the agency.’ ”
Just six months into his tenure at PEMA, Mr. Full and long-time friend Glenn Cannon, then PEMA director, were faced with historic flooding and deaths in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania caused by Hurricane Irene in August 2011 and Tropical Storm Lee a few weeks later. Irene was blamed for causing six deaths; Lee was responsible for 12 deaths as streams overflowed, trees were uprooted and power lines were downed.
Mr. Cannon, who died in January and who was also on scene at the Brady Street Bridge incident as Pittsburgh public safety director, recruited Mr. Full to be PEMA chief deputy director — just as he had recruited Mr. Full to Allegheny County from Pittsburgh in 1998. During those years in Harrisburg, Mr. Full had posters pinned around his office that read, “Hope is not a plan and failure is not an option,” Mr. Mertz said.
Mr. Full also played a key, behind-the-scenes role in creating Allegheny County’s centralized 911 system, cajoling and sometimes arguing with municipal and police officials about doing what was best for the people they served. The county has no authority to require municipal participation in a centralized emergency dispatch system, and many chiefs of police and elected officials were slow to give up local control.
“He would say, ‘I don’t care if they hate me,’ ” Ms. Full said. “‘Put your ego aside. Save your town.’ That would infuriate him.”
Convincing municipalities to switch to a single dispatch center was no small feat, said Matt Brown, who succeeded Mr. Full as Allegheny County EMS chief and fire marshal.
“That was a huge, huge undertaking for him, getting it to hold together for 20 years now,” Mr. Brown said.
At one time, Allegheny County had 30 municipal emergency dispatch centers across the county’s 130 municipalities, which caused unnecessary confusion and delays in getting emergency help.
There are 13 dispatch centers today along with the county’s 911 center which most municipalities use to handle calls for police, fire and ambulance.
In a 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interview, Mr. Full said that a heart attack that his grandfather suffered in 1971 inspired a career in EMS. Mr. Full, who was 16 at the time of the incident, said his grandfather was taken to the hospital by police car, which was then the standard of care.
When Forest Hills formed a volunteer ambulance and rescue service a few years later, Mr. Full signed up and underwent EMS training, hoping to save the lives of other grandfathers. He was among the first paramedics to join Pittsburgh’s Bureau of EMS in 1975 when the agency was created.
But his first love was firefighting, Ms. Full said, and his early plan was to transfer into the bureau of fire from EMS after he was passed over for a firefighter job.
Among the people extending condolences for Mr. Full’s death was Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and city Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich, who called Mr. Full a mentor and “well-known instructor” in firefighting and hazardous materials’ incidents.
Ms. Full said she met her future husband when he moved into a house across the street from hers in Stanton Heights with several other guys.
“He was my neighbor,” she said. “It was fate.”
They dated for just eight months before getting engaged.
“He was the most selfless and humble guy I’ve ever known,” she said.