NYC Firefighter Speaks About 'Black Sunday Fire'
Herkimer Telegram 5/11/09
Eight
seconds.
That’s how long New York City firefighter Eugene Stolowski said
it took for a deadly apartment fire to get out of control and
cause six firefighters to jump from several fourth-story
windows.
Two of the men died and the others were seriously injured.
Stolowski shattered both legs and his pelvis and in his own
words, “dislocated my head from my body.”
“I died in the backyard,” he said Saturday at Ilion High School
during a presentation on the 2005 Bronx fire known as “Black
Sunday.”
But, fellow firefighters at the scene performed emergency
medical procedures and saved his and the three other injured
men’s lives.
Instead of “just laying back and dying” after the traumatic fire
and many months in rehab and the hospital, Stolowski said he
decided to share the events of that fateful day with other fire
departments across the country to hopefully help prevent future
disasters.
Ilion Fire Department Deputy Chief Robert Paddock asked
Stolowski to give the presentation after meeting him during a
training session.
“I saw him talk about the dangers of what can go wrong with a
fire,” Paddock said. “How fires can seem very routine, but how
things can get out of control very quickly,” he added.
The presentation Saturday showed
a step-by-step progression from responding to a call all the way
up to when flames and intense heat forced firefighters into a
decision to leap from 50 feet onto concrete.
Stolowski described a rather casual process of checking the
floor above the fire.
After performing standard procedures, mainly searching for
residents and ventilating windows, several tragic circumstances
slowly began unfolding.
Since the building was illegally subdivided into room-size
apartments, undisclosed walls blocked off normal avenues for
fire to flow to windows.
Smoke and heat began intensifying. And still, “This wasn’t worst
job I was ever on,” Stolowski admitted thinking.
He then warned he may have been guilty of “getting a little
complacent.”
“It goes from a sunny day on the beach to a trap door opens and
now you’re in hell,” Stolowski said.
During a recording of the day’s transmissions between
firefighters, a report of a slight extension is heard.
This report usually means another water line may be needed
eventually on the floor above a fire, Stolowski explained.
However on Black Sunday, roughly eight seconds after the
seemingly mild update, the firefighters got trapped by
fast-moving and funneling flames.
“It happened so fast,” he added.
The heat got so intense so quickly there was little time to
react. The men were physically forced to the windows, and
Stolowski said it was far from their choice.
“You want to get away from that heat,” he said, referring to
reasoning behind jumping from high heights in emergency
situations. “You know you’re going to die…but even bring a
lighter towards you, and you’re going to move right away.”
Later after visiting the building, friends showed him the fire
got so hot it melted a mirror off the bathroom wall.
Stolowski said thanks to his fellow firefighters he was able to
survive the day and share the story with emergency personnel
from Ilion and several neighboring departments gathered
Saturday.
Speaking with firefighters that suffered injuries in the line of
duty has given Stolowski a chance to spread a message he has
come to live by: “Don’t give up, you’re still here for some
reason.”
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