Two brave firefighters miraculously saved a Bronx man trapped with his head “sticking six inches out” of a third-floor window during a massive Tuesday apartment fire, one of the FDNY heroes said Friday.
“He was in desperate need. He was running short on time,” Captain John Hunt said of the dramatic rescue on East 187th Street near Belmont Avenue — where a blaze killed two people and injured nearly a dozen others.
“He told me ‘I can’t make it.’ I go, ‘You’re gonna make it,” said Hunt, of Ladder 56, who saved the victim with fellow smoke-eater Tommy Burke.
Hundreds of firefighters were rushing to save residents of the five-story building — including people stranded on the roof and hanging out of windows — when the victim’s brother frantically approached Hunt.
“A civilian came and grabbed me, would not let go of my arm, kept saying, ‘My brother’s trapped, my brother’s trapped,” Hunt said at a press conference about the fire Friday.
The sibling “dragged me into” a neighboring building, where Hunt entered the lobby through a “wine shaft alleyway” and spotted the victim stuck in a shaft on the third floor of the building.
“He was trapped up there. He had his head six inches out at the top of the window,” Hunt said.
Hunt coached the victim, who has not been identified, to break the window as fellow firefighters grabbed two 24-foot ladders.
“He finally broke the window, ended up cutting his arm, but he was actually able to get lower, get his head back [in],” Hunt said.
Burke then climbed the ladder and pushed an air conditioner out of the window then pulled the victim to safety.
“He grabbed him, took him out head first, down the ladder,” Hunt said
“I can’t stress the job that these guys did, just getting the ladders into the back, getting them set up, teamwork is what it’s all about,” he said.
More than 270 firefighters and EMS workers rushed to the nearly 120-year-old building just after 1:30 p.m. after a blaze apparently broke out on the first floor.
The fire rapidly spread in part because several doors “were left open” in the sprawling building, Deputy Commissioner Dan Flynn said Friday.
“The door was left open to the fire apartment, the door was left open to the front of the building, and the door was left open to the bulkhead which is the exit to the roof,” Flynn said.
“If not for those doors being open, we believe that the fire may have even been contained in that one apartment and we would not have lost anybody,” he said. “We cannot stress to you enough: Please close the door when there is a fire.”
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