by MICHAEL WHITE
The task before firefighter Jeffrey Cool of Rescue Co. 3 was daunting enough — rappel from a roof and rescue a man from the window of a burning building.
But on June 12, 2004, the circumstances at 851 Bruckner Blvd. in The Bronx could hardly have been worse. The roof behind Cool and his company was ablaze, leaving them nothing solid to anchorthe rope. His colleagues would have to hold the rope as he descended. Meanwhile, a man knelt on the floor under a fourth-floor window, trying to stay below the smoke and heat. As Cool dangled in front of the window, the fire ripped into the room, but the trapped man, frozen with fear, was unable to stand up and get out the window. "I was on the windowsill on my knees trying to coax him out, Cool recalled. "And all he kept saying was, 'I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.' "Then I found some inner strength or whatever you call it and pulled him out." Cool, a 38-year-old father of two, swooped onto the windowsill and pulled the 200-pound man up, over the sill and out the window — leaving them both hanging in mid-air as flames engulfed the room. "I bear-hugged him as tight as I could, and I wasn't going to let go for anything," Cool said. "I saw the room lighting up in front of me." Cool's colleagues then lowered the pair to the ground. "The rope rescue that Cool made is very unusual in the FDNY, said Herb Eysser, a Uniformed Firefighters Association official who nominated Cool for the New York's Bravest Liberty Medal. A rope would later help save Cool's life when flames trapped him and five colleagues in a fourth-floor Bronx apartment this past Jan. 23. He had lowered himself about 10 feet on the rope before plunging into an alley, and the shortened fall — 30 feet instead of 40 — has been credited with saving his life. Two Bravest perished in the blaze after being forced to leap from the window.
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