By MYUNG OAK KIM
Philadelphia Daily News
At first, the Port Richmond rowhouse fire seemed like an easy job for the four Engine 28 firefighters.
The smoke wasn’t too intense, and a captain and two firefighters quickly rescued two dogs, bringing them outside to cheering neighbors.
But minutes after the firefighters re-entered the home, the mood turned to panic.
“Engine 28. Come in. Engine 28. Come in,” the battalion chief called over the radio.
There was no response.
The scene turned chaotic. Numerous engine and ladder companies arrived, and rushed in and out.
Firefighters Walter Milewski and Walter Slowinski ran into the house and slid, on their backs, down the stairs to the basement in search of two missing firefighters, they said in court testimony yesterday. A blast of water from a firehose knocked Milewski’s helmet off. The heat mounted.
They found firefighter Rey Rubio’s limp body at the bottom of the stairs and tried to pull him up. Nearby, they saw Capt. John Taylor lying in about a foot of water and debris.
Rubio was somehow pinned. Balls of flames rolled toward them along the basement ceiling.
Slowinski used a hose brought in from the basement window to fight the fire, and Milewski kept trying to lift Rubio.
They began to run low on air in their tanks, and gasped from exhaustion. Milewski and Slowinski gave up and went up the stairs, as other firefighters descended.
About 15 minutes later, firefighters brought Rubio, 42, and Taylor, 53, out of the building. It was too late. They had suffocated.
Yesterday, during the criminal trial of Daniel Brough before Common Pleas Court Judge David N. Savitt, Milewski and Slowinski recounted the frenzied scene at the Belgrade Street fire. Brough, 37, faces third-degree murder, manslaughter and lesser charges in connection with the firefighters’ deaths in the Aug. 20, 2004, fire in his basement.
Brough is accused of maintaining a marijuana-growing operation in a plywood closet in the basement that he knew was a fire hazard. Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron contends that the blaze that killed Taylor and Rubio had started in the pot-growing closet.
Defense lawyer William Cannon contends that the fire started in the tool closet, next to the grow closet and that the deaths were a tragic accident.
During testimony, jurors remained riveted, and relatives of the fallen firefighters quietly shed tears.
Taylor’s widow cried during the recounting of the fire scene.
Rubio’s older sister, Xiomara Rubio, cried as a police officer described photos taken of the basement after the fire. Some photos showed firefighter flashlights and helmets lying amid mounds of debris.
Prosecutors also showed jurors evidence from the scene, including the charred remnants of the plywood pot-growing closet, the adjacent tool closet and the 1,000-watt sodium light bulb that, according to the testimony, could produce temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees.