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Firefighters know that injuries caused by a fire can be particularly severe for the young and elderly. Armed with this knowledge, Firefighters always make that extra push to find trapped victims so they may have a chance for survival. On the night tour of May 5, 2003, Lieutenant Stephen T. Hagan, working in Ladder 16, performed a rescue that demonstrated this point. At 2122 hours, Ladder 16 was assigned as the first-due Truck to a reported fire at 605 Park Avenue on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan. As the Company was responding, Lieutenant Hagan noted that the alarm printout stated a fire in Apartment 2A with the caller in the lobby. When Ladder 16 arrived at the address, members noticed a smell of smoke in the area. The fire building was a 19-story, 100- by 160-foot, fireproof multiple dwelling, with scaffold equipment on the exposure #1 and #2 sides. This blocked the members’ view of the lower three floors of the building, concealing the fire apartment. Lieutenant Hagan and his members entered the lobby where they were met by the building doorman and an occupant of the fire apartment. They informed the Firefighters that a person was still in the burning apartment. Lieutenant Hagan and his forcible entry team--FFs Patrick DePierro and William Hennessy--made their way to the second floor, but were delayed. They had to force open the locked stairwell door because the doorman did not have a key. Lieutenant Hagan and the Firefighters got to the second floor and opened the door to the public hall. They encountered dense smoke and high heat as a result of the apartment door being left open. Crawling down the hallway with zero visibility, the Lieutenant located the fire apartment door at the end of an L-shaped hall. Lieutenant Hagan entered the apartment to search for the missing occupant. He observed fire extending out into the dining room. He ordered the can Firefighter to hold back the fire with his extinguisher, to protect their path of egress. Lieutenant Hagan and the irons Firefighter crawled past the fire, searching for the missing civilian. They searched a large living room, but found no one. Lieutenant Hagan received a radio message that the missing person was located in a back bedroom. Ladder 16’s outside vent Firefighter was operating from the scaffolding on the exposure #1 side of the building. The Firefighter asked Lieutenant Hagan via handie-talkie if he could vent the living room windows. Understanding that the victim was somewhere in this apartment, Lieutenant Hagan granted permission for the windows to be vented for life. This was a risky tactic because the vented windows could draw fire toward the victim and searching members, as a hose-line was not yet in operation. The Lieutenant realized that the scaffolding outside blocked any exterior access to the rear bedroom window by the outside vent Firefighter. Lieutenant Hagan continued to search and found a door that led to a rear room of the apartment. After opening it, he felt a blast of heat from his left side. He turned and saw fire coming from another door connected to the fire room, which had burned through and was cutting off his means of egress. Crawling along the floor on his belly, Lieutenant Hagan quickly searched a bathroom and moved on toward the rear bedroom. When he came to the bedroom door and entered, he found a walker, which led him to believe that the trapped civilian might be disabled. Moving along through the now-thick smoke and heat, Lieutenant Hagan found a hospital bed. As he placed his hand on the bed, he felt the victim move. Lieutenant Hagan reassured the victim and radioed Battalion 8 that he found the civilian. He then began to remove the victim, an 87-year-old disabled woman, Mrs. Edna Branner, from the bed. Engine 39 had begun its attack on the fire from the first doorway encountered to the fire room. The fire room’s wraparound feature caused fire and heat to be pushed toward rescuer and victim. Lieutenant Hagan pressed on and dragged the elderly woman through a small hallway, shielding her with his body from the punishing heat, past the fire area. When Lieutenant Hagan and the victim reached the dining room, the other members of Ladder 16 assisted their Officer in removing Mrs. Branner to the street. EMS personnel took over Mrs. Branner’s care in the lobby. She was transported to Cornell Burn Center where she arrived in cardiac arrest, but was resuscitated. She had to undergo hyperbaric chamber treatment to remove carbon monoxide from her system. Lieutenant Hagan’s perseverance at this fire paid off. He successfully saved the life of a disabled elderly woman under dangerous conditions without the protection of an operating hose-line and with a limited escape route. Lieutenant Stephen T. Hagan is honored for his bravery with the Emily Trevor/Mary B. Warren Medal.--AP |
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Emily
Trevor/Mary B. Warren Medal
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