[UPDATE: GRAPHIC PHOTO BELOW] As a Bensonhurst neighborhood still reels from a fire that killed five and forced one woman to throw her two children from a third-story window, there was a somewhat happier ending to a blaze in Harlem yesterday. Around 4 p.m., several people were trapped on the fifth floor of a five-story brownstone on 127th Street and Madison Avenue. The FDNY arrived at 4:21, and Deputy Chief Jim Hodgens tells the Daily News, "There were two people hanging from window ledges. They were ready to jump."
There was no fire escape on the fifth floor, and firefighters reached the trapped occupants not a moment too soon. "She jumped into my arms as quick as she could," firefighter Artie Kunz, of the FDNY's Ladder 14, said of the woman seen in this photo. "It made me feel great." An unidentified man was also rescued from a window ledge, but a third victim wasn't so fortunate: Inside the building, firefighters found an unconscious woman who had gone into cardiac arrest. She was revived in the ambulance and transported to Harlem Hospital in serious condition, the Post reports.
Locals say the building had been renovated over a year ago, but the occupants were squatting there. Firefighters managed to get the blaze under control in less than an hour, but there's no word yet on what caused it. The life-saving rescue comes as Mayor Bloomberg's budget proposes eliminating up to 20 fire companies and letting 500 of the city's 8,500 firefighters leave through attrition.
UPDATE: Freelance photographer Jerome A. Shaw sends us this shot, below, of the unconscious woman rescued from the building. It is extremely graphic. And via Gothamist contribute, another reader points out that one witness interviewed by the Post, Nina Persson, is most likely the lead singer in The Cardigans. She tells the tabloid, "I saw a man hanging out from the window, and it was really uncomfortable to watch because he was screaming. He would have been hanging there for about 10 minutes before the firefighters rolled up, so it was very tense."
