Engine 239 (continued)
Engine 239 rescue - Thanksgiving Day 2011:
Hero firefighters who saved infant from Thanksgiving blaze caused by lit cigarette tell their stories
By JOHN DOYLE and MATTHEW LYSIAK AND TRACY CONNOR
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 26, 2011 AT 1:21 AM
Scorched interior of apartment on President St. after a Thanksgiving Day blaze. Eight-month-old Josiah Alexis was rescued from the inferno by four of the Bravest.
The baby hadn't taken a breath for 51/2 minutes and there was no heartbeat.
Firefighter Neil Malone, who had given the infant mouth-to-mouth to no avail, knew the difference between life and death would be measured in seconds.
"I was working against the clock," he said. "It didn't look good."
Yet Malone and the paramedics did not give up on the tiny boy whose lungs had been filled with smoke from a Thanksgiving Day inferno.
And then, in the cramped confines of an FDNY ambulance, just before the six-minute mark, came twin miracles: a pulse and a small snortlike cough.
"It's like a song to your ears to hear that baby get its breath on its own," Malone said.
"It was the best Thanksgiving I ever had."
The boy, 8-month-old Josiah Alexis, was still fighting for his life on Friday as Malone and his Bravest brothers recounted the heroic efforts to save him from the fire.
A cigarette touching a mattress sparked the blaze on President St. in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The residents tried to drag it out and wound up trapped in a hell of heat and smoke.
Firefighter Richard Myers of Rescue 2 arrived on the scene to find one injured man on an awning after he fled the flames — and a woman retreating inside from a third-floor window.
He grabbed a ladder off the truck and climbed up. Inside, the woman, Justine Alexis, 20, was sitting on a bed, staring at him.
"She said, 'My baby is inside! My baby is inside!' " Myers recalled. "I cleared the glass and grabbed her. She was bleeding bad. I lowered her onto the ladder.
"I put on my mask and climbed through the window. . . . There was a guy on the floor at the base of the bed, unconscious."
He lifted up the man and passed him off to a firefighter in a bucket.
Meanwhile, members of Squad 1 charged up the stairs with a hose and extinguished the flames consuming the back rooms.
Firefighter Dave Newbery , 39, of Rescue 2, followed them through the apartment into the front room, where the baby was found, unconscious, in a corner.
Newbery grabbed the soot-covered child and ran for the stairs.
"I was doing mouth-to-mouth on the baby on the way down," he recalled.
He handed off the baby to Firefighter Andrew Hartshorne, who normally works at Ladder 110 in downtown Brooklyn but was assisting a battalion chief on the holiday. Malone, who was treating a bleeding man on the sidewalk, got someone else to tend to the man and hurried to help Hartshorne resuscitate the baby.
"The baby was limp. He was not breathing. He was in cardiac arrest," said Malone, 54, who was driving the truck for Engine 239.
The 28-year veteran used his mouth to force little puffs of air into Josiah's lungs, then switched to an air bag that did it mechanically. Hartshorne, 36, rhythmically pressed down on the tot's chest.
"It was chaotic without a doubt," the nine-year veteran said.
Newbery, Hartshorne and Malone got the child onto a stretcher and wheeled it toward an ambulance down the street. Malone knew that brain cells begin to die after five minutes without oxygen — and Josiah had stopped breathing before that.
"Every second, every minute is crucial," he said.
He got into the ambulance with the limp child.
"The baby was unresponsive," he said. "He had no heartbeat, no respirations."
Fewer than 30 seconds later, Malone finally heard the baby's cough — proof that Josiah was alive.
In fact, everyone had survived, thanks to the speed, bravery and determination of uniformed rescuers working on a day most people spend with family. Later, Hartshorne said he had only done what he does every day.
"You have a lifeless 1-year-old and you do what your training taught you to do," he said.
Myers said he didn't mind working the holiday, and the outcome of the rescue was thanks enough for him.
"I'm just glad it all worked out," he said. "Knowing they are all alive — it felt good."
Firefighter Neil Malone, who had given the infant mouth-to-mouth to no avail, knew the difference between life and death would be measured in seconds.
www.nydailynews.com
Eight-month-old Josiah Alexis is desperately clinging to life after he was miraculously pulled from a Thanksgiving day blaze in Brooklyn which left four of his family critically ill.
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