Williston Park Boy Scout Steven Mushorn and four fellow scouts were honored at Tuesday night’s Williston Park Village Board meeting for their heady reaction in putting out a fire on the Solomon Schechter School playground last August.
The five boys were playing soccer in the driveway of Mushorn’s house on Meagher Place around 2 p.m. one day in late August when Mushorn’s mates started yelling fire, Mushorn recounted.
He said he thought they wanted him to shoot the ball, until he turned around and saw flames on the Schechter school grounds. A section of rubber chips on the playground surface had somehow caught fire.
“There was a fire at Solomon Schechter. I ran to tell my father,” he recounted. “He gave me a fire extinguisher and we put it out.”
Mushorn, a sixth grader at the Mineola Middle School, gave full credit to his friends, who included Alex Marchiselli and Joe Earley, both scouts with Mushorn in Troop 200, Joe Carr from Boy Scout Troop 45 and Mushorn’s younger brother Jason, a member of Cub Scout Pack 311, for urging him to act when they saw the blaze.
Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar presented each of the boys with commendations and complimented Mushorn for bolting across the street to put out the blaze.
“We’re proud of the speed with which you moved,” Ehrbar said.
Steven’s father, Keith Mushorn, said he was also impressed with the way all of the boys handled themselves in the situation.
“I was proud of all of them. They were calm. They didn’t panic. None of them went near the fire except the one who was putting out the fire,” the elder Mushorn said. “It wasn’t a huge blaze. But it was a nice little fire.”
The fire was extinguished within minutes, before members of the Williston Park Fire Department arrived on the scene, Keith Mushorn said, adding that they couldn’t identify a cause.
“They used a rake and looked for a cigarette butt, but they really didn’t find anything,” he said.
He said he thought their Boy Scout training played a factor in their cool reaction to the fire.
In other developments:
• Ehrbar and other village trustees commended the Williston Park Fire Department for their fast work in extinguishing an apartment fire on Willis Avenue on Jan. 9. Village Building Inspector Kerry Colllins said the cause of the fire is still under investigation, although the cause is believed to have been a faulty lamp in the apartment.
• Keith Bunnell, superintendent of the village Department of Public Works, gave a summary of the department’s activities during 2012, including 175 water meters changed, 90 street lights repaired, 59 trees planted and 35 curb complaints from residents addressed.
• A representative from the Town of North Hempstead’s Project Independence, will be speaking at the Neighborhood Watch meeting scheduled for Williston Park Village Hall on Sat., Jan. 26 at 10 a.m. Project Independence provides services to enable seniors to stay in their homes.
