Last night a woman clung to an air conditioner to escape the fire that was ravaging her Bronx apartment. After climbing out onto the unit she lost her hold and fell, but survived with a broken leg. "She was hanging on to the air conditioner and she lost her grip," said a neighbor who witnessed the amazing escape. "She did not scream. She hit the steps and bounced." The woman was still conscious when firefighters arrived at her side. “'There's somebody else up there,” she told the FDNY’s Rocco Cocciolillo, who fought the “real big blaze.”
A man was found unconscious in the living room of the fifth floor apartment where the fire seems to have been contained. "It was hot up there. Visibility was nil," Cocciolillo told the Daily News. "The fire was in the living room where I found the guy." According to the Times, both of the apartment's residents are in critical condition. The male victim has burns on 65 percent of his body and Cocciolillo said he would “pray for him to survive.”
Fire sources say the apartment ignited around 7 p.m. in a brick building in the Bronx's Brucnkner neighborhood, and was under control in half an hour thanks to 60 to 65 firefighters. The cause is still under investigation, though a deputy fire chief told NY1 the fire may have started in an electrical outlet and spread to a fold-out couch.
Firefighters on the scene of another Bronx fire yesterday morning rescued an obese 24-year-old woman. That blaze appeared to have been started by someone smoking in bed, and five were injured, thought not seriously.
