\u00a0massive Tuesday apartment fire<\/a>, one of the FDNY heroes said Friday.<\/p>\n\u201cHe was in desperate need. He was running short on time,\u201d Captain John Hunt said of the dramatic rescue on East 187th Street near Belmont Avenue \u2014 where a blaze killed two people and injured nearly a dozen others.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me \u2018I can\u2019t make it.\u2019 I go, \u2018You\u2019re gonna make it,\u201d\u00a0 said Hunt, of Ladder 56, who saved the victim with fellow smoke-eater Tommy Burke.<\/p>\n
![\"Captain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/51b6ecc3e7c333c94a199ed7b461080b.jpeg\"\/)
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Captain John Hunt helped save a victim with his head stuck out a window at an apartment fire in the Bronx.James Keivom for NY Post James Keivom for NY Post<\/p>\n
Hundreds of firefighters were rushing to save residents of the five-story building \u2014 including people stranded on the roof and hanging out of windows \u2014 when\u00a0 the victim\u2019s brother frantically approached Hunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cA civilian came and grabbed me, would not let go of my arm, kept saying, \u2018My brother\u2019s trapped, my brother\u2019s trapped,\u201d Hunt said at a press conference about the fire Friday.<\/p>\n
The sibling \u201cdragged me into\u201d a neighboring building, where Hunt entered the lobby through a \u201cwind shaft alleyway\u201d and spotted the victim stuck in a shaft on the third floor of the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was trapped up there. He had his head six inches out at the top of the window,\u201d Hunt said.<\/p>\n
Hunt\u00a0coached the victim, who has not been identified,\u00a0 to break the window as fellow firefighters grabbed two 24-foot ladders.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe finally broke the window, ended up cutting his arm, but he was actually able to get lower, get his head back [in],\u201d Hunt said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/6960baa5d95281716b230d5fc776fbac.jpeg\"\/)
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A five alarm fire broke out at 660 East 187 Street in the Bronx Tuesday.James Keivom for NY Post James Keivom for NY Post<\/p>\n
Burke then climbed the ladder and pushed an air conditioner out of the window then pulled the victim\u00a0 to safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe grabbed him, took him out head first, down the ladder,\u201d Hunt said<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t stress the job that these guys did, just getting the ladders into the back, getting them set up, teamwork is what it\u2019s all about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
More than 270 firefighters and EMS workers rushed to the nearly 120-year-old building just after 1:30 p.m. after a blaze apparently broke out on the first floor.<\/p>\n
The fire rapidly spread in part because several doors \u201cwere left open\u201d in the sprawling building,\u00a0 Deputy Commissioner Dan Flynn said Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe door was left open to the fire apartment, the door was left open to the front of the building, and the door was left open to the bulkhead which is the exit to the roof,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf not for those doors being open, we believe that the fire may have even been contained in that one apartment and we would not have lost anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cWe cannot stress to you enough: Please close the door when there is a fire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two brave firefighters miraculously saved a Bronx man trapped in a massive apartment fire with his head “sticking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[9377,128,75068,82851,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-208982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-apartment-fire","tag-bronx","tag-james-keivom","tag-john-hunt","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"FDNY](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/513002756d1f9111a2635bebde9cf53b.jpeg\"\/)
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