By James DeWeese
The pair arrived too late, however, to help a 50-year-old man who apparently leaped from a second-story window in desperation after being badly burned. The man, second-story resident Jose Porrata, was taken to New York Weill Cornell Medical Center's burn unit in Manhattan, where a spokesman said he was in critical but stable condition.
About 11:15 a.m. on April 17, Billy Rucco, 55, and Charlie Judge, 39, both veteran Department of Sanitation workers, were getting ready to take their lunch break when they spotted plumes of smoke rising from about a street away.
The pair said they could have shrugged it off. But “Charlie said, 'Wow that smells like furniture,'” Rucco later recalled.
“We knew something was up,” Judge said.
So they rushed toward the plume, the pair said.
The smoke was coming from a two-story brick home at 62-45 Boelsen Crescent, a block from 64th Street, where Rucco and Judge were working.
When they arrived, they found Madona Rosenfeld, a Georgian immigrant who shared a second-floor apartment with her husband for the past two years, trapped on the roof over the front porch.
Next to the house, Rucco and Judge said they saw a motionless body.
It turned out to be Porrata, who was burned over 50 percent of his body, lying naked on the ground. “He was all full of blood,” said Judge, who added that he and a neighbor wrapped Porrata in a blanket.
A Fire Department spokeswoman said the department received the call at 11:15 a.m., about the same time Rucco and Judge said they were arriving on scene.
Meanwhile, as the fire grew Rosenfeld twisted her ankle scrambling through her bedroom window and could not climb down on her own, Judge said.
Judge said he grabbed a ladder from the yard of a neighbor who called out to them and climbed up to the front porch, helping Rosenfeld down.
Twelve fire units with 60 firefighters arrived within five minutes of receiving the call, the department spokeswoman said. The fire was under control by 11:49 a.m., she said.
“It was horrifying,” said neighbor Alex Roberts, whose husband had offered the ladder.
Although mildly injured, Rosenfeld was well enough to travel to the hospital accompanied by her husband, Ira Rosenfeld, who arrived home shortly after, Roberts said.
Ira Rosenfeld credited the pair with saving his wife's life.
“If not for the Department of Sanitation and what these men did, I might not have my wife today,” said Ira Rosenfeld, who sent a letter to the mayor commending the men.
Fire Department officials attributed the fire to careless smoking.
Ira Rosenfeld said he was also grateful to Porrata.
“He got my wife out of bed. Otherwise, she would have just been lying in bed,” Ira Rosenfeld said. “He was on fire when he screamed for my wife to save her life.”
Ira Rosenfeld said doctors did not expect Porrata, whose face, hands and lungs were severely damaged, to survive.
Rosenfeld said he and his wife had already found a new apartment. A health care worker, Madona Rosenfeld has returned to work with the use of a cane, her husband said.
Still, Rosenfeld said, “every night she's crying in my arms. She's just in tears. She keeps thinking she smells smoke.”
Reach reporter James DeWeese by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
