by JOHN ANNESE
A month after he pulled barely breathing Tarika Tibbs out of her smoke-filled apartment building, Firefighter John Scarangello got a letter in the mail from the woman's grandmother. Ms. Tibbs -- who nearly died when she ran back into the burning Clifton building looking for her children -- will make a full recovery, the letter said. "To hear that news was unbelievable. That's why I took this job. That's why everybody takes this job -- for a moment like that," Scarangello, 29, of Annadale, said yesterday. At a ceremony in Engine 153's Stapleton firehouse, Scarangello was named the Advance's Firefighter of the Month. On Sept. 10, Scarangello, who has been with the FDNY for three years, was responding to a sixth-floor blaze at 185 Park Hill Ave. As he checked to make sure the fire hose running through the hallway didn't have any kinks, he heard Ms. Tibbs moaning and gasping through the smoke. Ms. Tibbs had run into the building believing that her two young children were imperiled -- in fact, they had already made it out safely. She had a heart attack, collapsed and disappeared into the smoke. Scarangello crawled through "heavy smoke, heavy heat and unknown fire conditions," and found her, said Chief Michael Feminella of the 21st Battalion in Rosebank. He called out on the radio he'd found a person in distress, and started to pull the 275-pound Ms. Tibbs out of the hallway, toward a stairwell. A group of firefighters came to his aid within seconds. She suffered smoke inhalation and burns of her face and ear, and spent several days in critical condition at Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze. Feminella praised both Scarangello and the members of his company, Engine 153. "They're on the line, doing the right thing, doing their jobs," Feminella said. "These guys are always on the ball."
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