NY Daily News – March 06, 2017
by LAURA DIMON ANDY MAI ROSHAN ABRAHAM REUVEN BLAU
Three firefighters used a dangerous rescue technique — being lowered from the roof by rope — to save a man trapped in a burning Brooklyn building Sunday morning.
“Those guys, they got me out of the building,” said Ubeaka McKinney, 39, of the daring save on the third floor of 241 Rockaway Ave. in Brownsville at 7:30 a.m.
“I was hanging out of the window and they came down from the roof on a rope,” he added.
McKinney made sure his 88-year-old grandmother, who lives with him in the apartment, got out. But he got stuck inside and began to yell for help.
That’s when Firefighter Andrew Scharf, from Ladder Co. 176, was lowered from the roof by Firefighter Todd Brenner of Ladder 120.
“I had to reassure (McKinney) just to hold on to me and he’d be down quick,” Scharf said. “He was very thankful and very happy.”
“This is something that we practice all the time but very rarely have a chance to do,” Scharf added.
When he got to the window, McKinney was panicked, and reached for his rescuer’s foot.
“He was nervous and disoriented,” Scharf recalled. “We are trained for that situation. You just try to calm them down.”
At another major fire in Jamaica, Queens, a stranded firefighter also used a rope to lower himself down from a second floor.
The seven-alarm fire started just before 11 p.m. Saturday in a store on the first floor of a row of two-story buildings on Liberty Ave. near 111th St. in Richmond Hill, the FDNY said.
“I was searching the rear bedroom when the fire flashed over me,” recalled Firefighter Charles Flohr of Ladder Co. 143. “I had about 10 seconds to put it on and get out the window.”
More than 200 firefighters responded to battle the blaze, which quickly spread from the store to a dozen second-floor apartments, officials said.
The Red Cross was on the sceneand provided eight families — with 23 adults and eight children — with emergency financial assistance, food, clothing and blankets, a spokeswoman said.
“It’s a shame they lost their houses, lost the buildings,” FDNY Chief of Department James Leonard said. “But if we don’t have loss of life, that’s the most important thing.”
One of the residents, Domattie Singh, 25, was getting dressed when the fire broke out.
“It was coming out really heavy,” she said, referring to the smoke.
The fire burned a large portion of the back of the apartment, she said. Singh and the rest of her family have moved in with a relative.
Extreme temperatures and strong winds contributed to the rapid spread of the fire through the row of 13 buildings, according to Leonard.
“You can feel the wind right now, it’s very cold, very windy, and that definitely contributed to the spread of the fire,” he said.
WITH AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN, BEN KOCHMAN
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