The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 12

12a For fire and rescue trainers, twister brings tragedy home a V1 us- m.y 1 Page Wednesday, September 26, 2001 The Sun 'i 'i i rafter 1 Man's 2 daughters killed, I I I "Vwt as MFRI, conducted courses in 36 states and 12 foreign countries, he said. Edwards said he recognized many of the firefighters and commanders on the scene yesterday because most had taken courses at MFRI. Some MFRI staff members had recently returned from rescue efforts at the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center. While the horrors of yesterday's scene paled in comparison, MFRI staff members found something eerily different about the University of Maryland disaster site. It was home.

Ray Hodgson, an institute instructor and a retired Anne Arundel County firefighter, spent eight days at the World Trade Center as part of the first Federal Emergency Management Agency team at the site. Yesterday, he was back on another rubble pile his own workplace. Hodgson said his experience in New York was very stressful. "I try to get back into a normal routine and this happens. We haven't had time to really unwind from being up there." Edwards said the institute had lost almost all of its equipment, as well as 400,000 student records going back to its origin in 1930.

The institute's 45-person staff was in temporary quarters, waiting to move into a permanent structure on campus in December. JERRY JACKSON SUN STAFF Tornado aftermath: Kurt Eisenschmidt (left), a retired MFRI instructor, and Montgomery County firefighter Donny Boyd sift through the wreckage ofthe institute's trailer in College Park. Sisters were always close trailer wrecked at UM "disaster response school By Michael Dresser STAFF COLLEGE PARK When the tornado struck, the rescuers became the rescued, i The triple-wide trailer that Jhoused the Maryland Fire and tRescue Institute was reduced to rubble Monday night as the power-IM twister slammed into the University of Maryland campus. I Remarkably, all seven people in building about 5:20 p.m. sur-vived.

But tragedy struck home staff members learned that one of their own, Deputy Director Patrick Marlatt, had lost two daughters to the killer storm. Staff members and visitors i were struck by the awful irony that Maryland's leading institution for teaching disaster response should be at the center of its own disaster. I- "We train people to handle i these emergencies, and to have it 'happen to you gives you a startling perspective," said Steven T. Ed-'wards, the institute's director. He said the deaths of UM students "Colleen and Erin Marlatt, who had 'just left the institute when the tor- nado struck their car, was "beyond 'belief." Edwards expressed relief that Johly one of the staff members in ijthe trailer when the tornado struck was still In the hospital.

"The training paid off. They were In the building, it went dark, fthey dived under the desk and i that's what saved them," he said. pVe have good people, we have Tstrong people and we'll be back in 1 business as soon as we can." I The former Prince George's County fire chief said the institute trained 28,763 students last year in 1,500 programs, ranging from basic firefighting to the complex issues Lfacing a senior commander at a disaster site. The institute, known i Ill Fx -v on Main Street in Ellicott City. "She was just excited about being alive," Smelgus said.

Erin was also known for taping up quotes and prayers in the shop, Smelgus said. After the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, she put a prayer for peace above the register. At College Park, the sisters were known as good students one of Colleen's communication professors described her as a "brilliant scholar." Colleen had won first place in a student research competition for a paper on music therapy and senility. Among her studies, Colleen was working on a communication-management study with one of her professors, Andrew Wolvin.

Sharon E. Baxter, a sociology lecturer at College Park, said she was "devastated" to hear of Erin's death. Erin was taking her sociology course on the study of deviance this semester. "She was a smiling, wonderful young woman," Baxter said. Although the sisters' postgraduate plans weren't final, family and friends said Colleen, who was doing an environmental internship this semester, planned to attend graduate school and work in that field, and Erin was looking toward a career in social work.

Viewings will be from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. and from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. today, and from 3 p.m.

to 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow at St. Louis School on Route 108 in Clarksville.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Louis Church. Sun staff writers Julie BykoWicz, Amanda Crawford, Michael Dresser and Jamie Smith Hopkins contributed to this report. 211 Sisters, from Page 1a blessing that the two of them are together." Yesterday, in the living room of the family's two-story gray house on Triadelphia Mill Road, with a steady stream of sobbing friends walking through, Patricia Marlatt spoke of her daughters and of the series of tragedies the family has endured in the past two years from her colon cancer to her brother's fatal heart attack last fall to Erin's brain surgery in January.

After a semester off to recover, Erin, a sophomore sociology major, had returned to College Park and had filled her schedule with fun classes, her mother said. She had just left a theater class where she was building props for campus productions when she popped in on her father Monday. Her shoes were specked with paint as she waited for F. Patrick Marlatt, the assistant director of the fire institute, to finish work so they could go home. CmX: -CC 1996, Erin in 1999.

Both had lived away from home for part of their time in college. Colleen had moved home after the previous semester to save money. Erin stayed home after her surgery. "What a blessing that was," said Patricia Marlatt, 50, an English teacher at Mount de Sales Academy. "It was nice to have them back." The women's bedrooms reflect their personalities Colleen, the organized sister, Erin, the eclectic one.

On Colleen's bed is a patch-" work red-and-white quilt; on her shelves, books about the environment and Spanish. On Erin's walls are sheets of fabric in colorful patterns and a poster of Bob Dylan. Both were musical, known for singing show tunes and Simon and Garfunkel tunes in the car. Both played the piano; Colleen played the harp that still sits in the family's living room. When Erin was recovering from surgery doctors at Johns Hopkins hospital removed a benign brain tumor in January after Erin complained of headaches Colleen was always by her side, even spending nights in the hospital, Morse said.

When Erin was at home recovering, Colleen would pick up flowers or games for her sister, he said. The surgery, which resulted in a loss of about 15 percent of her hearing, affected Erin's outlook on life, making her more sensitive, her mother said. Erin talked about those changes to Michelle Smelgus when the two worked weekends together at Zebop, a women's clothing store AV? AT We Bliy; TOO! Call DVX, I Offering housed the fire institute's training program, burying Patrick Marlatt, 51, with his legs trapped for about 45 minutes. He escaped, he said, with bruises and a gash above his right eye and was released from Washington Hospital Center on Monday night. All seven people in the trailer survived the storm.

The institute's staff knew Colleen Marlatt well because the young woman had worked there part time for two years. "She was a wonderful, reliable girl just the best student worker you could ask for," said Ann Davidson, director of administration at the institute. At the Fifth District Volunteer Fire Department in Clarksville, where Patrick Marlatt was chief, the sisters were "family by association." The suddenness of their deaths is difficult for people to comprehend, Deputy Chief Dave Moyni-han said. "I don't think the average person can readily identify with the sense ofthe loss," he said. "It's just not a tragedy you can adequately prepare yourself for." The women were part of a large, close-knit extended family, raised with their brother, Michael, 26, first in Catonsville, then in Clarksville.

Colleen and Erin went to St. Louis School in Clarksville through eighth grade, then to Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson. Colleen graduated in CCTV SpeciaUsts Installation Included with Purchase of System 410-803-2859 www.insightsur.com 800-562-6110 TELEPHONE SYSTEMS A FRACTION OF mdmortgageshop.com "the low rate wins" Menswear RENTS and SELLS and Accessories. marked 30 to 50 IBS Htam elsewherel from the Balto. Arena 410-727-0763 WL lit FR VOICE MAIL System "I (Complete Communications Provider) Data Voice eXchange uicmt Northern Telecom Toshiba, etc: Inc.

410-526-8030 Instead, Colleen offered her a ride. Normally, Colleen, a senior environmental science and communications major due to graduate in December, would have left campus earlier her classes ended before Erin's but she stayed Monday to do computer work for a communications class. Colleen would always tell folks where she was and where she was going using her cell phone to connect her with the world, her mother said. At 2:30 p.m., she spoke with her boyfriend, Ben Morse, at work at the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, and told him she'd be staying late at school and would call him later. She called her mother about 4 p.m.

to tell her she'd be bringing Erin home. So when the storm hit and there was silence when Colleen didn't answer her cell phone and the "I'm OK" call to Patricia Marlatt never came, they knew. "I was hoping she was stuck in traffic, her cell phone wouldn't work," said Morse, 23, a criminal Justice major who dated Colleen for more than four years. University of Maryland President C. D.

Mote said the women's car, a 1992 tan Mercury Sable, was apparently lifted over one of the campus dormitories before landing in a tree in a parking lot. The same tornado that battered his daughters' car also destroyed the triple-wide trailer that OWINGS MILLS: SV ACCESSORIES SHOES stores will close at their regular hours. 800 TALBOTS and talbots.com. Cage Formalwear And is always print found DOWNTOWN: Across I III! I AW a' 4.W OUR CLASSIC mi a ft-- A JT (ITiTi) i pV fi ll 1 1) I I I 1 Located in Valley Centre 410-581-5351 OFF original prices it' mwifr mum wmmrnm MISSES PETITE KIDS nnocp Stores open today 8 a.m. 9 p.m.

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