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by PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
Hero of the Month spotlights those men and women, civil servants and civilians who go beyond the call of duty to make New York a better place.
Weeks after the World Trade Center catastrophe, Firefighters Jeffery Cool and Patrick McKenna transferred into Rescue 3, part of rebuilding a company that lost seven men on 9/11.
Cool joined in hopes of filling the void left by a close friend, Firefighter Tom Foley, who had gained fame after he rappelled the side of a building to save a dangling construction worker in 1999 and who died in the terror attack.
The "new" members had to learn all the rescue techniques. But they also had to prove themselves to the small, close-knit group that had worked together for years and could anticipate each other's moves in the thick of things.
If there was any doubt that Rescue 3 had risen from the ashes of the twin towers, it was erased on June 12, when Cool and McKenna each did something that most firefighters never see - much less take part in.
They performed separate, simultaneous lifesaving rope rescues, dangling from the flaming roof of a four-story building in the Bronx. They each grabbed a person from a top-floor window and held them for the tense moments until they were lowered to the ground.
For their derring-do under very severe fire conditions, Cool and McKenna are the Daily News Heroes of the Month.
Both were quick to give credit to everyone involved in the effort.
"We worked as a team," said Cool. "The best part was telling my kids about it."
"It didn't hit me until about 15 minutes later," said McKenna. "There was a lot going on up on the roof, almost chaos, but we're trained to keep focused. The rescue involved a lot of people."
The roof rope rescues took place during a blaze that broke out at 7:07 p.m. on a Saturday night, in a third-floor apartment at 851 Bruckner Blvd. in Longwood. Seven people were rescued, and none were seriously hurt.
Ladder 42 members removed a woman and three children from a third-floor front apartment by aerial ladder, and firefighters led a man out of the building by an inside staircase.
But at the rear of the building, Anthony Perez, 56, and Nelly Pachecu, 51, were trapped at the windows in a shaft between the burning building and the one next door. Firefighters could not bring a ladder there.
Lt. Kevin Williams ordered two teams to the roof, where fire was venting out of the bulkhead and had spread. Williams heard screams coming from the shaft, and black smoke was shooting up.
Pachecu was threatening to jump. Perez was kneeling at a window sill gasping for air.
Williams ordered Cool and Rescue 3 Firefighter Richard Bailey to grab Perez. He told McKenna and Ladder 42 Firefighter Denis McLaughlin to rescue Pachecu.
Flames had spread to the area of the roof directly behind the lowering point for Cool, eliminating any possible anchor for the rope. So Bailey lay on the roof, his feet braced against the parapet wall, and two other firefighters held him down as he controlled the rope.
Cool descended into the shaft and reached Perez, who was reluctant.
"The guy was giving up on me, and I was saying, 'Help me out buddy, come on,' but he kept saying, 'I'm going to die!' He was frozen, and there was heavy smoke over his head, and the fire was at the door," said Cool, 37, a 12-year veteran. "I guess I had an inner strength, because he was over 200 pounds, I couldn't put my arms around him, but I got him over the sill and I screamed, 'Get me down fast!'
"I was squeezing the bejesus out of him. He just clung to me and we got down. The whole thing took about a minute, but seems like an eternity. He got into an ambulance, and I never saw him again."
Meanwhile, several feet away, McLaughlin was able to tie a rope to a chimney, and he lowered McKenna.
"She was hanging out the window, there was a lot of smoke and she was in a pretty bad situation," said McKenna, 45, a 14-year veteran.
He reached the woman as fire was burning through the transom of the room, intensifying the smoke and heat.
"I think she thought she'd be going down a ladder, and when she saw a guy on a rope I think she had second thoughts. Anyone would," McKenna said.
He hooked his leg into the sill, grasped and lifted her and pushed out of the window, dangling four stories above the yard, obscured in the black smoke.
"She was screaming the whole way down. ... It was a pretty intense moment. She took a lot of smoke."
Pachecu was treated at Jacobi Medical Center, and Perez was treated at Lincoln Hospital.
The last roof rope rescue had been when Foley and an Emergency Service Unit cop rappelled from a 12-story Manhattan building to rescue two construction workers on a collapsed scaffold, while a crowd watched.
For Cool, his own lifesaving act was the ultimate sign that he had carried on for his friend. "We jelled as a company," he said.
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