Fire heroes save two seniors
Published: March 14, 2005
Brooklyn firefighters charged through flames and thick smoke to pluck two elderly women - one of them an unconscious 99-year-old - from their bedrooms in separate fires yesterday, officials said.
The heroic rescues in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bensonhurst came less than six hours apart and left both women in stable condition.
“When I came home and I saw my daughter smile, it made me even happier that I saved somebody’s mother,” Firefighter Joseph Wakie of Ladder 132 told the Daily News.
About 1:30 a.m., Wakie and fellow Firefighter Zackary Fletcher were inching down a pitch-black hallway in an apartment building on Classon Ave. near Fulton St., Bedford-Stuyvesant.
They were searching for 83-year-old Viola Waldron, whose son standing outside told firefighters she never made it out of the first-floor flat.
“I only saw 4 inches in front of my face,” said Wakie, 33, a five-year FDNY veteran. “I tried to wipe my mask, but I still couldn’t see anything.”
He eventually found a burned Waldron, who lay unconscious on her bed.
“This is a 10-45!” he yelled over the radio, signaling a serious injury.
Wakie and Fletcher then carried out Waldron, who was gasping for air but alive. The mom, who suffered burns on her back, was taken to Kings County Hospital.
Firefighters from Engine 235 had the blaze, which started in Waldron’s kitchen and was likely accidental, under control in 30 minutes.
Later on, at 6:15 a.m., a fast-moving basement fire left Mickelina Devito, 99, unconscious in her bedroom on 76th St. near 18th Ave. in Bensonhurst, fire officials said.
Directed by a relative of Devito, Firefighter John Carlson crawled through an open first-floor window at the rear and quickly discovered the grandmother on her bed.
Nine-year vet Carlson, 35, carried her to the window as Firefighter Brian Mooney and two civilians helped pull her out.
Devito, and four others who escaped from the house, were taken to Maimonides Medical Center in stable condition.
The fire was doused in 45 minutes by firefighters from Engine 243. The cause appeared to be accidental.
Carlson, a Brooklyn husband and father of three assigned to Ladder 168, was modest about his efforts.
“Any other guy would have done the same exact thing,” he said. “It’s being in the right place at the right time.”
Wakie said he was following in the footsteps of his firefighter dad, who died last year from cancer.
“Now I know he’s proud of me,” the Queens husband and father said.
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