Heroes rescue disabled man trapped by fire in Brooklyn
Benjamin
Hays, on stretcher, is treated after
being rescued.Unable to move, Benjamin Hays faced near-certain death as smoke filled his Brooklyn apartment Sunday morning.
The disabled 69-year-old father of 15 children, who uses a wheelchair, lay helpless in bed and was struggling for every breath when heroes in his Brownsville building sprung into action.
An upstairs neighbor broke down his locked front door and a teenager desperately ran for help from a firehouse across the street as the inferno raged.
"I busted his door open," said Shakeema Lopez, 28, who ran down from her apartment after smelling smoke. "I guess I'm strong. I gave it three pushes - Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Once inside, Lopez faced an even stronger hurdle - thick smoke that stopped her in her tracks.
"I couldn't go in," said the home health aide. "[The smoke] came straight out of the door. It was too strong for me."
Lopez called for her 15-year-old cousin Kevin Smith and told him to get help from the firehouse across the street from the blazing Rockaway Ave. building.
"I felt really frightened," said Kevin, who ran to Ladder 176/Engine 233 with other neighborhood kids.
Firefighters said they knew something was terribly wrong as soon as they heard the kids yelling for help outside.
"They were knocking on the window, kicking onthe doors, saying there was a fire - across thestreet," said Firefighter Tim Carl, 31, of Freeport, L.I.
Firefighters dashed into the building and found Hays in his bed wearing nothing but boxer shorts, his second-floor apartment full of smoke and heat.
"He said he couldn't walk, he couldn't get out of bed," Carl said. "He was complaining he couldn't breathe."
Rescuers dragged Hays, who weighs close to 300 pounds, out of the building, and an ambulance took him to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. He was treated for smoke inhalation and listed in stable condition.
Fire officials said the cause of the fire was under investigation and did not appear suspicious.
Hays' relatives said he cannot walk because he is awaiting knee replacement surgery.
His son Vaughn, 42, who lives a few blocks away, couldn't say enough about his heroic neighbors - uniformed and civilian.
Growing up in the neighborhood, Vaughn remembered having snowball fights in the winter and water-gun fights in the summer with firefighters from the firehouse.
He never thought he would need them to save his dad's life.
"You really can't put in words the job that they do - the service they do for the city," he said. "I'm grateful. I'm very grateful."