Hero firefighter just ‘followed voice’ of mom trapped in burning building
Published: September 15, 2006
Firefighter John Scarangello’s keen ears and sharp instinct gave Tarika Tibbs a fighting chance Sunday afternoon.
The 32-year-old mother had collapsed and disappeared into the thick smoke filling the sixth-floor hallway of 185 Park Hill Ave. after rushing back into the burning building to look for her two children.
Scarangello, of FDNY Engine Co. 153, managed to find her.
The 28-year-old Annadale resident was checking to make sure the fire hose running through the hallway didn’t have any kinks in it when he heard some faint grunts and groans coming through the smoke.
“There was no visibility. … I could hear that she was breathing,” Scarangello told the Advance yesterday. “At first, I didn’t know if it was in my head.”
Even so, Scarangello crawled along the hallway wall toward the sound. He got about 30 or 40 feet in, and ran right into Ms. Tibbs.
“I don’t know how I heard her. I just followed her voice,” he said.
Scarangello began pulling her out of the hallway toward the stairwell, and within seconds, a group of firefighters came to their aid.
Ms. Tibbs, who suffered smoke inhalation and burns of her face and ear, remains in critical condition in the burn unit of Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, yesterday. Her family members couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday.
“My prayers are for her and her family,” Scarangello said yesterday. “Her health right now is the number-one thing on my mind.”
As his fellow firefighters kidded with him and called him by his nickname, “Sugar,” in the garage of the Stapleton firehouse, Scarangello played down the rescue, insisting that the entire company should get credit for the save.
He just acted on his training, Scarangello said.
“What I did, every single person on the job would have done the same thing,” he said.
The first firefighter in a family of police officers, Scarangello joined Engine 153 three years ago. “I’m the black sheep of my family, I guess,” he said.
His father retired as a detective from the North Shore’s 120th Precinct, and his uncle, also named John Scarangello, was killed in the line of duty in Queens in 1981.
Scarangello said he wanted to follow in their lifesaving footsteps. “I wanted to have a job where I could go to sleep at night and know I was helping people.”
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