City firefighters rescued a man and woman from a smoke-filled Brooklyn apartment after a fire broke out in their kitchen Sunday morning.
The blaze started just after 7:05 a.m. in the third-floor rear kitchen of a rowhouse on Hancock St. at Wilson Ave. in Bushwick.
FDNY Firefighters arrived within three minutes, but heavy smoke was quickly pouring down the stairway of the three-story home.
FDNY Lt. Tim Mahon of Squad 252 was the first to arrive at the scene.
“The woman who owned the building... had told him that there were two people upstairs,” Dep. Chief Charles Downey said. Mahon found a 34-year-old man unconscious on the living room floor and lifted him out to the staircase, where other firefighters brought the victim to arriving medics.
The second victim, a 33-year-old woman, was trapped in what firefighters refer to as a “deadman room” — a small room over the home’s staircase, with a window facing the street.
Firefighter Christopher Wieber of Ladder 176 found her inside and led her to the window, where his fellow smoke eaters had set up the truck’s ladder to bring her to the ground.
Downey said the “coordinated effort” to find both victims and position the ladder in front of the window helped get them out quickly.
“It’s always great to see our troops rush in there without hesitation. It’s always a good feeling,” he said.
Medics took both to New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan in serious but stable condition.
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