WCBS 880 Exclusive: FDNY Honors Brooklyn Firefighters For Sunset Park Rescue
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - It's a great day in the FDNY when one life is saved. Members of Engine 201 Ladder 114 rescued 33 people one morning last year, WCBS 880's Sean Adams reported.
Wednesday, three of them will be honored at the FDNY medal ceremony to be held at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue.
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It was March 13, 2011 when an arson fire lit up a four-story tenement in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
"There was fire from the front door up through the stairs going out the roof," firefighter Kevin Hogan told Adams.
He rescued women and children and went back in several times.
"Saw two little infants laying on the floor on their backs. So, I crawled over got those two little guys," he said. "Went back into the bedroom where the infants were and their mom was laying against the bed, unconscious. I couldn't really pick her up. She was about 8-months pregnant."
"It was like organized chaos, people out the fire escapes," said firefighter Joe Dunn.
Dunn went up in the ladder bucket when a man told him that his wife and kids were still inside.
"Went into the top floor window. Couldn't see a thing. Felt my way around. Felt a bed. There was a woman, two kids," Dunn told Adams. "I grabbed the two kids, got them to the bucket, used the guy that was in the bucket, used the father for removal. Then I went back in and got his wife."
Meanwhile, firefighter Sean O'Mallen manned a hose nozzle as the stairs crumbled beneath him.
"As soon as I put weight on those stairs, I fell right through up to my chest," he said.
No one was killed in the fire.
A few weeks later, the pregnant mother Hogan rescued gave birth in a burn unit. She named her new child Kevin after the hero firefighter.
Hogan found that humbling.
"We didn't do anything special," he said. "We just did our job."
"I didn't earn this medal, really," Dunn said. "Everybody that came to play that day, I'm receiving it for them."
Chiu Tsang, then 56, was arrested on charges of arson after video surveillance tapes of the fire were reviewed. Tsang was identified at the scene and made a number of incriminating admissions, according to the FDNY.
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