After the call came in — a fire licking the curtains in a 19th-floor bedroom window, smoke pouring into the night — the fire ladder truck from nearby Hooper Street was the first to arrive on Saturday at the Brooklyn high-rise. Out jumped Lt. Gordon Matthew Ambelas, a 14-year veteran, leading a team of four firefighters into 75 Wilson Street in Williamsburg. It seemed a routine fire, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet minutes after Lieutenant Ambelas, 40, headed into apartment 19B with two other firefighters to look for people who might be trapped, he was carried out unconscious, badly burned and on the verge of death.
A man who had made a career of rescuing people — from the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks, to the floods of Hurricane Sandy, and most recently from the clutches of a metal gate that had trapped a child — could not be saved.
As family and friends mourned the lieutenant on Sunday, the events on the 19th floor of the building in the Independence Towers remained murky. Investigators sought to determine how a blaze that did not at first appear unusual ended in the first death of a city firefighter in the line of duty in more than two years. A preliminary investigation found that it was started by an air-conditioner power cord that was “pinched” between the bed and a wall on its way to a power outlet, said Jim Long, a Fire Department spokesman.
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Lt. Gordon Matthew Ambelas Credit Fire Department of New York
Complicating the search, the one-bedroom apartment was crammed with the possessions of its owner, Angel Pagan, so much so, neighbors said, that they sometimes had trouble entering his apartment. In firefighter parlance, it was “Collyers’ Mansion conditions,” named for the hoarding Collyers brothers’ Harlem brownstone. It meant searching the apartment was much more dangerous and difficult than usual.
At the lieutenant’s firehouse on Hooper Street, in the Hasidic Jewish section of Williamsburg, not far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one thing was clear: Lieutenant Ambelas, “Matt” to his friends, had died as he had lived, on the front lines.
“Last night we had a tragic fire, and Matt, true to who he is, led these men from the front, with bravery,” said Eric Bischoff, 41, who served alongside Lieutenant Ambelas for 13 years at the Staten Island firehouse where they both started their careers. “He was unwavering in his efforts to find and save lives. He died a hero. That’s how he lived. And we will never forget him.”
He spoke moments after a crew of department officers draped ceremonial purple-and-black bunting above the firehouse’s red bays, as is tradition for fallen firefighters. It will remain hanging for 30 days.
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Mourners gathered at the Staten Island home of Lt. Gordon Matthew Ambelas on Sunday. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times
As the pleated fans billowed in a light breeze, some eyes in the crowd welled up with tears. A group of Hasidic men from a congregation across the street watched in respectful silence. The rabbi, Leib Glanz, said they mourned Lieutenant Ambelas because he led an operation last month to rescue a 7-year-old Hasidic boy who was trapped in a roll-down gate.
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The episode showed “that F.D.N.Y. members are always ready to help others,” Lieutenant Ambelas said during a ceremony honoring the firefighters on June 26. “It was great teamwork all around.”
In a statement on Sunday, relatives of the boy, Mendy Gottlieb, said they hoped the lieutenant’s family “finds solace in the so many lives that are living on because of him,” calling him “the savior of our child.”
Another bunting ceremony took place a few hours later at Lieutenant Ambelas’s old firehouse on Staten Island, where he began as a rookie with Ladder Company 81 in 2000 and served until September, when he was promoted to lieutenant and given a temporary assignment to Hooper Street.
But Staten Island, where he was raised and lived with his wife, Nanette, and two daughters, Gabriella, 8, and Giavanna, 5, remained his home.
They lived in a tidy brown-shingled home on a tree-lined street where American flags fluttered from almost every porch. Early Sunday afternoon, a man emerged to lower the Ambelases’ flag to half-staff.
When Yvonne Rogers, who lives on the block, was going through a divorce, Lieutenant Ambelas started showing up at her house to mow her lawn. She, in turn, sometimes babysat for his daughters. “We were family,” Ms. Rogers said, crying. “Matt is the best human being in the world. He was like a brother. I’m so hurt. May he be at peace.”
He was never without Gabby and Gia, as the girls were called. “He was fantastic with his two daughters,” said Mike Nolan, 58, another neighbor.
Residents at 75 Wilson Street in Williamsburg, where the fire took place. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
Through welling tears, Mr. Bischoff recalled the high jinks the two had gotten up to in their younger days: the time, for instance, when he entered Lieutenant Ambelas in a cooking contest, which the lieutenant did not know entailed making food for 800 people. He competed anyway — and came in second place. “Secret recipe,” Mr. Bischoff joked.
“He was beloved by everyone in the firehouse and truly everyone he came in contact with,” Mr. Bischoff said. “What a nice, fine man. Never had a harsh word for anyone.”
On his way to battle the fire that would kill him, residents of the Wilson Street high-rise recalled, Lieutenant Ambelas was friendly, reassuring terrified neighbors.
“He came up, he was smiling the whole time. A nice smile,” Andrew Vamvakaris said. “He said, ‘Hello, fellows.’ ”
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Firefighters at Lieutenant Ambelas’s firehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
The 19th floor remained so smoky on Sunday afternoon that it brought tears to the eyes. Its hallway was flooded with puddles of black water, its ceiling stained with soot. Residents described calling 911 and growing increasingly fearful as they heard Mr. Pagan’s three white Yorkshire terriers, by all accounts the pride and joy of his life, barking and saw smoke seeping out of his apartment.
Mr. Pagan, 51, a well-liked hairstylist and baker who packed his apartment with knickknacks and figurines, had been at a McDonald’s when the fire started around 9:10 p.m., and came running when he heard, he said. He said he had been forced to rely on extension cords because many of the power outlets had stopped working in his apartment.
Asked about the clutter in his apartment, he conceded there were lots of baking supplies around, but said, “You could walk around perfectly.”
About 100 firefighters eventually responded to the fire. Mr. Pagan’s dogs, which he used to ferry around in a baby carriage, did not survive. “I’m very sad,” he said in Spanish. “I’m out in the streets.” To Lieutenant Ambelas’s family, he said: “I am so sorry. He was so young.”
Carlos Torres, a 61-year-old neighbor, said he had seen the lieutenant brought out on a stretcher. Someone was pumping his chest. He had been badly burned by flames and heat.
“They come running,” said another neighbor, Sigfredo Vega, marveling at the firefighters’ courage. Any normal person would flee from a fire, he said, “but they come in front.”
Correction: July 7, 2014
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a boy who had been trapped last month in a roll-down gate. He is Mendy Gottlieb, not Gotlieb. – NY Times
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