FDNY hero rescues 81-year-old man as fire destroys Upper East Side apartment building, killing one and injuring 14c

Firefighter James Lee, in a daring Upper East Side rescue, plucked the 81-year-old man from a burning five-story apartment building — and rappelled them both safely to the street below.

The flames were burning through Lee’s lone lifeline early Thursday after he grabbed Duff and played beat the clock from the building’s top floor.

“A miracle,” Duffy told the Daily News from his bed at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “I never thought I’d make it. I thought the smoke would get me I thought he was an angel from heaven.”

The 3:30 a.m. blaze on E. 93rd St. near First Ave. killed one man on the building’s third floor. Three other civilians and 11 firefighters suffered minor injuries in the blaze that gutted the building.

Duffy said he was awakened by a fire alarm to find his apartment already filling with smoke that blocked access to the fire escape. The blaze began down on the building’s first floor, blocking residents from escaping through the front door.

The asthmatic octogenarian figured his time was short as the flames grew long — and then Lee appeared from an adjoining building. The firefighter wrapped his rope around both of them and headed for the ground.

“We just held onto each other, like hugging each other, and went down the side of the building,” recounted Duffy. “That part was quick, maybe two minutes. My arms and legs are burned pretty good, but I feel pretty lucky.”

The fire also burned through Lee’s rope right as the pair touched down. The firefighter did his best to keep Duffy calm as the flames licked away at their line.

“When we got down I said ‘I hope you enjoyed the ride’, and you know he sort of smiled and said ‘Thanks,’” Lee said. “A few more minutes and it would have been a totally different scenario.”

16 PHOTOSVIEW GALLERY

A deadly fire breaks out up on the Upper East Side

FDNY Assistant Chief Roger Sakowich said Duffy didn’t have much time left.

“If they didn’t get him when they got him he wasn’t going to have much longer,” Sakowich said. “It was important they got him that way. That’s a last resort for us. We don’t want to use a rope if we don’t have to, but he didn’t have much time.”

The dead man was badly burned and was not carrying identification was discovered, said FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation, but Nigro said the flames spread quickly because fleeing residents left their apartment doors open — sending the fire up the stairs.

Terrified residents said the flames roused them from their sleep.

“We came into the hallway and it was filled with black smoke,” said Sharon Landstrom, 23, who lives on the top floor of the building. “It was so thick that we had to go down the fire escape.”

Once she hit the ground, Landstrom ran down the block, looking back at her burning home one last time.

“The building was engulfed in flames. There was black smoke coming out of all the windows,” she said. “It looked like the fire started at the bottom of the building, but by the time we got outside it was going all the way up to the top.”

First responders evacuated two adjoining buildings as more than 200 firefighters tackled the six-alarm blaze, which was brought under control about 7:30 a.m.

Next door neighbor Brian Schafler, 28, said he woke up when he heard sirens outside his window.

“I looked outside and the entire roof of the building was on fire,” he said. “There was this huge black cloud of smoke coming from the building. There were flames bursting out of every window.”

WITH JEANETTE SETTEMBRE