Two NYPD officers suffered critical injuries Sunday after being overcome by smoke in a Brooklyn highrise while responding to a fire caused by a burning mattress, police said.
The fire on Surf Ave. in Coney Island began about 12:30 p.m. on the 13th floor when somebody lit the bedding on fire. It escalated to all-hands status in six minutes, officials said.
NYPD Housing Bureau Officers Rosa Rodriguez, 36, and Dennis Guerra, 38, rushed to the building and boarded an elevator going up, in response to 911 calls, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
But they “were overcome by smoke in the hallway as they exited” the elevator, Bratton said at Jacobi Medical Center Sunday night.
“Fire department personnel arrived at the building and made their way up to the 13th floor where they located both police officers unconscious and unresponsive,” Bratton said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the officers.
“It’s incredibly difficult work that these men and women do,” he said at the news conference. “And on behalf of all New Yorkers our hearts go out to these families and we will stand by them.”
They located both police officers unconscious and unresponsive.
Rodriguez has nearly four years on the job and Guerra has almost eight.
A hyperbaric chamber was being used to treat Rodriguez at NY-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Doctors at Jacobi Medical Center were treating Guerra, officials said.
Sean Foster, 40, lives nearby and saw emergency responders trying to save the officers after carrying them from the burning building.
“When they brought the first officer out, the male, they were pumping his chest,” Foster said.
“They saved him before they put him in the ambulance,” Foster continued. “The lady, they took her straight to the hospital. They weren’t pumping her chest. They just had the oxygen mask on her.”
Councilman Mark Treyger was at the 18-floor building checking on residents after the blaze and said he was told that a mattress fire in a hallway sparked the blaze.
“Officers are talking to a bunch of people right now, trying to get to the bottom of this,” Treyger said. “How long was (the mattress) out there? What circumstances led to all this happening? A mattress doesn’t light itself on fire. All those things are being investigated.”
A woman and a young man were taken from the building by detectives, but cops wouldn’t say whether they were being questioned.
Benny Cyrus, 14, was working his summer job at Luna Park when the fire broke out and ran back to check on his mom on the 13th floor when he heard the sirens.
“I saw her looking out the window,” he said as cops kept him away from the building. “I was nervous because she has a bad heart.”
Sources said Bratton was transported by helicopter from the Hamptons on Long Island to the city to address the incident.
Two firefighters and two residents suffered minor injuries, an FDNY spokeswoman said.
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Louise Harrington, 70, who has lived at the building for 36 years, said cops were going door-to-door looking for information about the fire.
“I heard it was a mattress set on fire. That’s what the cops told me,” she said.
“I just think it’s evil,” Harrington added. “Whoever it is, I hope they catch them and they convict them.”
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