By Cara Tabachnik
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
NEW YORK — There was hardly time to think. The fire in the two-story building in the Parkchester section of the Bronx was roaring when firefighters got there early Friday morning.
Through a thick haze of smoke, crawling on their hands and knees and using special thermal imaging cameras, three of them pulled five people from the burning building.
For these men with Ladder Company 41, with 21 years on the job among them, it was their first-ever rescue. So Friday afternoon, Lt. James Congema, 39, of Smithtown, a nine-year FDNY veteran; Robert Watts, 36, with 11 years on the job; and rookie Ron Fuentes, 23, felt good.
“We just wanted to get everyone out,” said Watts, of Mahopac in Putnam County, his eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion.
Fuentes, who lives in the Bronx, brushed off the accolades: “We were just doing our job.”
The dramatic rescues came more than two weeks after the tragic fire that claimed the lives of 10 people, nine of them children, from two Malian families in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.
The five victims - two females and three males - were rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where officials said the females were in critical condition, and three males were in stable condition Friday night.
Neighbors identified them as Ethan Ramos, 49; his three children, Joseph Ramos, 18; Jennifer Ramos, 17; and Jessica Ramos, 11; and an unidentified male friend, 50, who was visiting.
The fire broke out about 1:30 a.m. in the basement of the wood-frame home on Unionport Road. About 60 firefighters in 12 units responded, bringing the blaze under control by 2:17 a.m., authorities said. The cause of the fire was under investigation.
Efrain Quinones, 26, who lives on the building’s first floor, said he saw heavy smoke creeping underneath his apartment’s door. He heard the building’s fire alarms going off, grabbed his wife and three kids, and ran outside. Then, he said, he went in to get his neighbors, who lived in an adjacent apartment.
“I was kicking and banging the door, talking to them to see if everybody was all right. I could hear the kids crying,” Quinones said. “I finally broke through and smoke came out everywhere. I headed back outside and there were the firemen.”
Just inside the door of the victims’ apartment, firefighters found two people, then discovered three more in bedrooms, Congema said. All were unconscious, he said.
“When you search a burning building, you pray you don’t find anybody,” he said.
Hardly able to see anything through the smoke, the firefighters used thermal imaging cameras to find the people, they said. Then they brought the victims outside, one by one.
“I grabbed the arms, and he grabbed the legs and we pulled them out,” said Fuentes, motioning to Watts as he and other firefighters spoke at a news conference at Ladder Company 41 in the nearby Van Nest section.
“You think about your own family,” Congema said of the rescue. “I’m just glad everything worked out this way.”
3 firefighters, with 21 years’ experience, make their 1st rescue, saving 5 people.