BX. LIFESAVER
Hero on way to work pulls 2 from fire
A SECURITY GUARD came to the rescue of a boy and an elderly woman who were trapped by a fire that ripped through a Bronx building Monday.
Alex Pineiro was walking to his job when he spotted the flames and heard people screaming from an apartment building on E. 163rd St. between Prospect and Rev. James A. Polite Aves. just before noon.
“I saw the fire. It was bad,” Pineiro told the Daily News. “I knew I had to go in.”
With only his uniform to shield his body from the heat, Pineiro went in through the front door, climbed to the second floor and sprang into action.
“I grabbed the kid first,” Pineiro recalled. “The kid was probably about 4 years old. He was OK. He was breathing. He just didn’t know where he was. He was confused. I took him to the ambulance.”
Moments later, Pineiro saw the woman.
“She was severely burned on her arm,” Pineiro said. “I grabbed her as well. She fainted on me, and I carried her from there to the ambulance. I grabbed her and put her on my shoulder and I ran downstairs.”
Witness Chilly Reyes, 28, saw two children trying to escape the flames from the third floor.
“There were two boys about 10 years old,” Reyes said. “They were screaming and asking for help. We started telling them, ‘Come down the fire escape. Use the stairs.’ They were scared, but the flames were getting to be too much. We just kept yelling, ‘Come down the stairs!’ The flames were getting to them. They looked scared. But they did. They got down.”
The building’s handyman said he was working on the second floor when he saw flames and started getting people out. “I got an extinguisher,” the man said.
That didn’t help.
“I tried to put it out. But it wouldn’t go out. The flames now are shooting from the second floor to the third floor,’ he recalled. “It just kept going. I said, we have to get . . . out of here."
“Then this guy came in,” the handyman said, describing Pineiro, who later complained of chest pains, was taken to Lincoln Medical Center, released — and then went to work. “He’s a hero. He rescued a kid and an old lady. I saw him running down the stairs with the kid, then the lady. He’s the man.”
Fire officials said 106 firefighters responded to the blaze and got it under control at 12:45 p.m.
Nine other people, including two firefighters and a police officer, were also taken to Jacobi and Lincoln medical centers. They were in stable condition.
The cause was under investigation late Monday.