New Jersey Firefighter Recovering After Burns

FRANKLIN: Firefighter Lew Pinnella knew he had one chance to get out of a burning Franklin home, and it was through a second-story plastic window pane that wouldn't break.

Flames were blocking the stairway behind him and firefighter Brian Hoiberg. The bedroom doors around them were locked. He could feel his hands burning. Their turnout gear was melting.

The two firefighters had gone upstairs searching for a resident thought to be trapped inside the house. Now, they were trapped.

And the window wouldn't break.

It's been more than a month since the Feb. 9 fire on Frank Street injured Pinnella and Hoiberg, who also is a North Brunswick police sergeant. Both men were admitted to The Burn Center at St. Barnabas in Livingston.

Hoiberg was released first. Pinnella came home Sunday, and now he wants to thank the hundreds of people throughout the area who turned out to help the men.

He said there are so many to thank: everyone who works at St. Barnabas, from the doctors to technicians, because they put their hearts into their work; the strangers who donated money and blood; friends, neighbors and co-workers of his wife, Patty, who dropped off meals so she would not have to worry about cooking when she started her workday at 5 a.m. and didn't return home from hospital visits until after 8 p.m.

Pinnella also mentioned family members who baby-sat their children, 8-year-old Austin and 10-year-old Ryan (who wants to be a firefighter when he grows up); schoolchildren who sent get-well cards; firefighters who organized fund-raisers, blood drives and came to shovel the family's driveway during a recent blizzard, and PTO members who helped with laundry.

Pinnella grew up in Franklin and has owned a sign-painting and truck-lettering business for 22 years, working out of a large garage next to their Somerset home. A volunteer firefighter since 1972, his two brothers and father also were volunteers for Community Fire Co. on Hamilton Street.

On Feb. 9, he was home when his pager went off. Another fire.

He drove the ladder truck, and halfway there firefighters got a call: There was entrapment. Later, they learned that although a neighbor thought someone may have been inside, no one was home. The cause of the blaze later was determined to be an overloaded power strip.

But when they arrived, still thinking someone was trapped inside, Pinnella and Hoiberg went into the burning home.

The men searched the first floor and found no one. There were flames near the stairwell, so they waited for another crew to come inside with a hose, then went upstairs.

At the top, Pinnella's helmet and air pack mask got knocked off because of a low ceiling. Standing in the narrow, six-foot long hallway, he pulled off his gloves to put his equipment back on.

"It wasn't hot at all," he said. "That's why it took us by surprise."

With his helmet and mask secure, he was trying to put his gloves back on. But before he could, there was a flashover -- the point when everything in the hallway suddenly ignited in flames. The pair began looking for a way out.

"Brian came up and said the fire was right behind us," he said.

They tried the bedroom doors. All were locked.

In a matter of seconds it reached 1,200 degrees in that hallway. Hoiberg's microphone radio melted in the open position. Outside the other firefighters could hear everything, including Hoiberg's screams for help.

Pinnella tried twice to break the hallway window. It was Plexiglas. It wouldn't crack.

"I told Brian, we're gonna die in here, because there's no way somebody is gonna get us," he said.

Then he saw his kids.

"At that time, I saw an apparition of my children, right in the middle of the fire," he said. "They just came there."

And he told Hoiberg they were going out the window.

Then Pinnella dove.

As he went through the Plexiglas, he locked his feet on the windowsill and hung straight down, suspended from the second-story window.

Firefighter Angel Natel was outside and had just made his way to that side of the house.

"He said, 'I've got you -- let go,' " Pinnella said. "And he caught me, and we rolled to the ground."

Two Franklin police officers helped drag him away. His turnout gear had melted. As Pinnella lay on the ground, he saw Hoiberg at the window. The flames were on him, and his turnout gear also was melting.

Firefighters put a ladder to the window, and Hoiberg slid down, headfirst.

They were taken by ambulance to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and then flown by helicopter to The Burn Center at St. Barnabas.

Pinnella spent exactly one month in the hospital: two weeks in intensive care and two in a step-down unit. He goes to therapy every day.

His face and the back of his neck were slightly burned. His hands suffered second- and third-degree burns. His left hand had one skin graft; his right two.

Now his goal is to get complete use of his hands back. Pinnella said Hoiberg also is doing well.

"We were both extremely lucky," Pinnella said