NY Times

Fire Lt. Howard J. Carpluk Jr., a 20-year veteran, died today at Montefiore Medical Center, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said. On Sunday, his fellow firefighter, Michael C. Reilly, 25, also died in the same fire.

Lieutenant Carpluk, 43, had been transferred to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx on Sunday for specialized cardiac care after the fire put him in an advanced state of heart failure, doctors said. He worked out of Engine Company 42, while Firefighter Reilly, who had graduated from the New York City Fire Academy less than two months ago, had worked for Engine Company 75.

"Today, New York City has lost another one of its Bravest," said Mayor Bloomberg.

The fire on Sunday, which began just after noon, gutted the Mega 99 store in the Mount Eden neighborhood of the Bronx and damaged a cellphone shop in the same single-story building. Witnesses and fire officials described it as a horrifying ordeal in which more than 100 firefighters continued battling the blaze even as they learned that five of their colleagues were trapped inside.

The three other firefighters who were injured when the floor collapsed were taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where fire officials said their conditions were serious but stable. At least eight other firefighters were treated at Jacobi for less serious injuries and released; a total of 23 firefighters suffered some injury at the blaze, the department said.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation, but Mr. Bloomberg said it did not appear to be of a suspicious origin. Witnesses who looked on from a fourth-floor window directly across the street from the fire said they had seen a heavy rooftop air-conditioner fall in, with enough force to crash through the floor beneath.

Commissioner Scoppetta said of the loss of the two firefighters: "In less than 24 hours, we have lost two courageous men, a young probie at the start of his career and an accomplished veteran who dedicated 20 years of service to New York City. It is a heartbreaking loss for the Fire Department."

In his 20-year career, Lieutenant Carpluk was awarded two citations for bravery, including one award for a rescue in 1988, when he carried out two unconscious men he found in the bedroom of a fire-engulfed apartment in the Bronx. A resident of Yaphank, he is survived by his wife, Debra, his 10-year-old daughter, Paige, and his 14-year-old son, Bradley.

Mr. Bloomberg said he met with the men of Engine 42 this morning.

"They told me how the lieutenant faced each and every challenge before him bravely and unflinchingly," he said in a statement. "Yesterday was no different."

Firefighter Reilly was taken to Bronx Lebanon Hospital at about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, arriving with no discernible pulse or heartbeat, a doctor at the hospital said, adding that he could not be revived.

Firefighter Reilly, who lived in Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County, had worked for smaller fire departments, in Ramsey, N.J., and Stratford, Conn., and had fought fires as a marine in Iraq.

He had just graduated from the New York City Fire Academy in early July.

Working as a New York City firefighter "was his lifelong dream," said Ronald C. Nattrass, the fire chief in Stratford.

Firefighter Reilly is survived by his parents, a brother and a sister. "All he wanted to do in his life was to be a firefighter," the mayor said.

The fire started in a back room at Mega 99, at the corner of Walton and East Mount Eden Avenues, and spread quickly, according to accounts by Mr. Bloomberg, fire officials and the owner of the convenience store, Anis Shaibi.

Mr. Shaibi, 28, said he was in the store with three employees and a customer when one of the employees yelled that flames were shooting out from the area of a refrigerator in the back of the store.

"I thought it was something small, and I got my fire extinguisher, but it got big so fast," Mr. Shaibi said. "When I saw everything falling off the ceiling, I told everyone to leave."

One witness, Jashira Abreu, a 25-year-old medical assistant, said: "The air-conditioner went in, and then the whole ceiling went in. I was in shock because it was so surreal."

A neighbor, Caesar Bodden, 40, said Mega 99 "sold paper things, a lot of things to clean with, and a lot of flammable stuff."

A second alarm was called in at 12:38 p.m., and by 1:07 p.m. it was a three-alarm fire, with 33 fire units ultimately summoned. By 1:30, 138 firefighters and 33 fire trucks were swarming the streets.

It was unclear when the floor collapsed. But after falling to the basement, the injured firefighters used their radios to transmit calls for help, fire officials said.

Although rescuers were able to reach and extricate three of the firefighters quickly, officials said that Firefighter Reilly and Lieutenant Carpluk were covered in debris and could not easily be reached.

Firefighters peered in from what remained of the roof, desperately battling a persistent fire in a soaking downpour.

A row of ambulances stood by to rush the firefighters less than two blocks to the emergency room at Bronx-Lebanon.

Each time rescuers emerged from the basement with one of the injured firefighters on a stretcher, a shout went out from others on the scene.

Colleagues rushed to help lift the injured into a waiting ambulance, some of them climbing in to lend support during the short ride to the emergency room.

It was 90 minutes before Firefighter Reilly and Lieutenant Carpluk could be pulled out, fire officials said.

The fire kept burning for more than four hours and was finally declared under control at 4:43.

The other seriously injured firefighters were identified as Battalion Chief Thomas W. Auer, 47; Lt. John P. Grasso, 45; and Firefighter Wayne J. Walters, 30.

Mr. Shaibi, who said he had been the proprietor of the store for 16 months, said he hoped to reopen.

But the fire had left Mega 99 a blackened shell, with its windows broken, its merchandise destroyed and its front awning ripped and dangling over the sidewalk.

Building department records indicated that the building had a fire several years ago and that reconstruction work was performed in 2000.

Representatives of the owner, Davir Realty of the Bronx, could not be reached for comment by Sunday night.

Firefighter Reilly and Lieutenant Carpluk became the 1,133rd and 1,134th members of the department to die in its 142-year history, and the first ones since Jan. 23, 2005, when three firefighters died in two separate fires, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx. Firefighter Reilly's and Lieutenant Carpluk's units had both battled that Bronx fire.