A fire in a two-story Bronx home sent two FDNY firefighters to the hospital, fire officials said Friday. A third smoke-eater was treated at the scene.
The Emergency Medical Service initially reported one of the firefighters with a life-threatening injury, but an FDNY source said the firefighter was “alive and talking,” and being treated in a hyperbaric chamber at Jacobi Medical Center as a precaution after his mask either malfunctioned or was somehow damaged.
Mayor Eric Adams visited the injured firefighters at the hospital Friday evening with FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh.
She said that EMS workers helped save the life of the firefighter after he collapsed while spraying water on the blaze by quickly administering the drug Hydroxocobalamin to reduce the effects of arsenic from the smoke inhalation.
“He [the firefighter] was in really bad shape. We didn’t know which way this was going to go. They did CPR and hit him with [Hydroxocobalamin] that drug,” said a person familiar with the efforts to save the firefighter at Jacobi Medical Center.
Jose Fernandez, 65, lost his home in the fire, and saw the flames envelop the neighboring building as he fed his birds.
“I was on the roof next door with my birds, feeding and watering them,”said the retired construction worker, who had lived in the building for 30 years.
“I saw the smoke and the flames. My birds were going nuts, flying all around,“ Fernandez said of the 125 pigeons he coops on top of the building’s unattached garage.
“I live on the second floor,“ he said. “My home was in flames. It was destroyed.”
“There was a firefighter. He had fallen down. He was hurt,” Fernandez said. “When they brought him out, he was on a stretcher.”
The blaze broke out just after 3 p.m. at 344 White Plains Rd. near Patterson Ave. in Clason Point, and quickly spread to an adjacent home.
The fire rose to two alarms before firefighters got it under control at 4:30 p.m.
Fire marshals were investigating the source of the blaze.
