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by TOM RAFTERY,FERNANDA SANTOS and MICHELE McPHEE
Firefighters struggled up 37 flights early yesterday to battle an inferno that blew off the door of the apartment of a Chinatown pack rat and injured more than 30 Bravest.
The heat knocked firefighters to their bellies, forcing them to crawl toward the blaze as they stretched hoses along the floor. Inside apartment 37B, flames were fueled by knee-high stacks of newspapers, and fanned by 30-mph winds whipping through blown-out windows.
The heat in the 20 Confucius Plaza flat was so intense, it blew the apartment's steel door off its hinges, leaving it crumpled like foil.
"The apartment was one big fireball being whipped up by the wind," said Battalion Chief Mike Mullins, a 27-year FDNY veteran who led the operation. "Being up there was like being in a big, black, hot oven."
The dangerous combination forced FDNY brass to order firefighters to knock down the wall of an adjoining apartment, from which they trained three hose lines shooting 500 gallons of water per minute on the flames.
"The high-rise, multiple-dwelling fires are the toughest we can encounter. These guys were fighting a massive fire in very difficult conditions," Mullins said.
"This fire was at its full-blown head when we got there, and to have to breach a wall like that is something we don't like to do. It's very uncommon."
Two hours after the 5:55a.m. blaze broke out, it was under control. No residents were hurt seriously.
But nine firefighters were burned and had to be gingerly carried down by EMS workers after the water-soaked elevators conked out. Nearly two dozen other firefighters suffered minor injuries.
Fire marshals believe the apartment's owner, Francis Wang, left a pot cooking on the stove overnight while he went on a bus jaunt to Atlantic City.
Wang's three-bedroom apartment was gutted yesterday. The kitchen's appliances were melted into mounds of twisted metal, and everything else in the home was reduced to ashes and soot.
"It was very bad," said Ada Wong, 69, who has lived in the apartment across the hall from Wang for 27 years. "If I opened the door, I would die. The firemen did good."
With Nancy Dillon
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