by JOHN LAUINGER and BILL HUTCHINSON
The widow of a hero firefighter killed battling a Bronx blaze said she'll always remember her husband as a wonderful dad to their two children. "What a special father he was," Debra Carpluk said of Lt. Howard Carpluk, 43. Hundreds of firefighters in their dress blue uniforms attended Carpluk's wake yesterday, filing past his open coffin at Chapey & Sons Funeral Home in East Islip. A similar scene unfolded yesterday at the wake for probationary Firefighter Michael Reilly, 25, at the Van Emburgh-Sneider Funeral Home in Ramsey, N.J. "Anyone who does that job is brave. These guys [Reilly and Carpluk] gave their lives to the job and they're heroes," Samuel Orosco, 32, a former Connecticut volunteer firefighter, said outside Reilly's wake. Carpluk and Reilly died from injuries suffered Sunday when they fell through the floor of a burning 99-cent store in Mount Eden and were trapped in the basement for 90 minutes. "You don't replace somebody like him," FDNY Firefighter John Blake, 44, said of Carpluk, a 20-year veteran of the Bravest. "He was the first one to teach the young guys the right way to do things." Carpluk's cousin, Susan Athinge, said the fallen fireman was a leader even as a boy. "He cared about everyone around him before himself," Athinge said. "That's just the way he was and that's why everybody loved him." Investigators continued to probe the rubble of the Walton Ave. store yesterday, trying to determine whether shoddy workmanship contributed to a floor collapse that doomed the firefighters. Up to 15,000 firefighters from across the country are expected to attend Reilly's 10:30 a.m. funeral today at St. Paul Catholic Church in Ramsey. Another massive turnout is expected for Carpluk's 11 a.m. funeral tomorrow at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Islip.
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