"The smoke was very, very thick - no visibility at all," firefighter Patrick McKenna said, describing his second search of apartment 4L. "You couldn't see anything. There was a lot more heat. In the back of my mind I was thinking the whole time, 'We're missing a room up here somewhere - there's got to be a room filled with fire.' Moments later, with McKenna pulling stuff out of a closet, the fire roared out of the nearby kitchen, he said.
McKenna, assigned to Rescue 3, was able to flee the apartment. Only later, he said, did he learn that six firefighters in other parts of the apartment had been forced to jump 50 feet to a concrete courtyard in a last-ditch effort to cheat death>>> |
Two hero firefighters were alive when they plunged 50 feet from a burning Bronx building and died from blunt trauma when they hit the ground, a coroner testified Wednesday.
"Black Sunday" fire victims Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew suffered broken bones and catastrophic internal injuries when they jumped to escape smoke and flames on Jan. 23, 2005>>>
