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The Fire Department awarded several medals yesterday to firefighters who battled a deadly Jackson Heights blaze last December that almost became a calamity.
The fire claimed two lives, but at one point firefighters were pulled off hose lines to give first aid to 17 building residents who had suffered life-threatening injuries and were laid out along the sidewalk.
Firefighter Victor Rosa pulled three people out of the flames in three attempts, the last one a child about his son's age.
"He told me later that when he picked up that little girl, Alexandra Sandoval, that, 'she felt like the familiar weight of my own 4-year-old son and I knew I would not let go of her until I had her safely out of the building,'" Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said.
Scoppetta and Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented Rosa, 34, a Bayside native who now lives in Massapequa Park, with the department's highest award for valor, the James Gordon Bennett Medal.
Four other firefighters won medals for their work at the fire on Dec. 15, and Rosa's company, Ladder Co. 138, was given the annual unit medal for valor.
The story at the time of the fire focused on the tragic deaths of Flor Pineda and Alex Sandoval, and the severe burns suffered by their three young children when an unattended candle started a fire in the six-story apartment building.
Yesterday, the spotlight was on the firefighters who rushed to the building at 37-52 89th St., but were delayed precious seconds because the caller who reported the fire gave his own address, more than a block away and around the corner.
Residents fleeing the burning apartment on the second floor had left the door open, allowing the air to fan and spread the flames.
Firefighters from ladder companies and from Rescue Co. 4 rushed into the building before engine companies could start pumping water on the fire.
As residents escaped down bedsheets in the rear, rescuers operated in heat so intense that the hallway and stairway walls were burned down to the brickwork.
By the time the rescue work was completed, the department had 17 radio calls from firefighters of Code 10-45, the signal for a fatality or life-threatening injuries.
The department awarded a total of 42 medals during the annual ceremony in front of City Hall, including one to firefighter Jeffrey Cool of the Bronx, for a rooftop rope rescue last June.
Cool was greeted with applause as he walked with the help of a cane to accept the medal, earned seven months before he was injured when flames forced him out a fourth-floor window at a Bronx fire where two colleagues were killed.
Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press
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