Friday, March 27, 2015

Firefighter's Account of East Village Blast: 'Oh Man, It's a Big One' - New York Times




Firefighter Mike Shepherd of Squad 41 in the Bronx. Edwin J. Torres for The New York Times

Firefighter Mike Shepherd, 47, of Squad 41 in the Bronx, is a third-generation New York City firefighter, following in the path of his grandfather and great-grandfather. When there was an explosion at a building in the East Village on Thursday, he raced to the scene.


This is his account.


“I was having lunch at a restaurant around the corner, on Seventh Street,” Firefighter Shepherd said. He was alone and off-duty.


“There was a couple. They were taking a photo. I went out and I said, ‘Would you like me to take a photo of the two of you?’ They said yes please. I took it and I handed them their phone back.”


“Then — baboom.”


“I turned and looked and I just took off running down the middle of the street.”


He went in the direction of the blast.


“As I got closer to the corner I could feel the concussion bounced off the building across the street and kind of hit me in the chest and I said, ‘Oh man, it’s a big one.’  ”



“Then I looked and I turned and I see the whole building is out in the street and people laying there, and I said, ‘Oh man, this is bad.’ And I looked up and I thought, ‘I got to check above.’ ”




Play Video|0:47

Firefighter Searches for Blast Victims



Firefighter Searches for Blast Victims



Video shows the moments immediately after an explosion at a building in the East Village on Thursday, with a firefighter, Mike Shepherd, climbing a drop ladder to search for anyone trapped inside.


Video by David Zhai on March 27, 2015. Photo by Michael Seto.

He saw a girl out on the fire escape, and she could not get the ladder unhooked.


“Me and a couple of other guys were trying to get the drop ladder down for her. It was too heavy. She was panicking. I told her, I said, ‘Honey, you got to calm down and listen to me.’ I said, ‘Bend with your legs and lift it up so it unhooks and then just let it go.’ And she was like, ‘I can’t.’”


He told her she could do it.


“I just kind of instilled confidence in her.”


In the minutes after the explosion, the fire had not spread widely but the damage to 121 Second Avenue was devastating.


In those precious moments, she finally unhooked the ladder and was helped to the ground by another man nearby.


“I asked her when I got her down to the bottom, I said, `Is anybody else upstairs?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know.’ So that is when I just climbed up the drop ladder and started searching from the second and the third and the fourth floor.”


“When I looked in, now the smoke started coming,” he said.


“As I was going up. People were yelling, ‘There’s fire in there.’  ”


He looked in the window of the second floor and saw it had nearly collapsed.


“I said, ‘All right, I can’t go in here.’  ”


He continued up the fire escape, banging on windows as he went.


“I was yelling, ‘Anybody in here?’  ”


Unable to pull the windows open from the bottom, he pushed them open from the top. After getting a window open he would hop onto the windowsill, pull away any curtains, and shout.


He knew not to go into the building, he said. Only if he had seen someone would he go in.




Firefighter Shepherd, in hat, talked a resident through unlatching the fire escape ladder Thursday to get out of her building. Nathan Blaney

As he climbed, the fire began to sweep up one building and spread to three others.


“Now, it started, now it’s lighting up all over,” he recalled thinking.


But still, he climbed.


“I said I got to see, let me go up. I got to the top floor, pulled the window down, yelled in there, and I didn’t see anybody or hear anybody. It looked like a nice apartment. I said, it’s probably they’re at work.”


He was at the top floor. Maybe eight minutes had passed since the blast.


Smoke was starting to pour out of the building but it was not yet engulfed in flames.


“All the people were screaming from the street, ‘You got to get down, the fire is getting big!’”


He was taking in smoke — or as he put it, “taking a feed.”


“And then I could feel the heat coming up,” he said. “There’s heavy smoke. I didn’t realize how fast it took off and how much time,” he said, pausing. “I mean, I had no time.”


From this high perch, as he was beginning to come down, he said he could hear the sirens and see the engines of his colleagues coming to the scene.


As he climbed down, he started to feel overwhelmed for the first time.


“I just kind of kept my cool, and got down,” he said. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got down and the heat was hitting me in the face, and the smoke. I said, `Thank God I didn’t have to pull somebody out.’ But I knew, I saw the truck and the engine from the fire escape, coming, so I knew the truck could have put the bucket up to me if I needed to.”


From the moment of the explosion to the moment he got back on the ground, he estimated about 10 minutes had passed.


Eight minutes later, 121 Second Avenue had completely collapsed.


Ten minutes after that, 123 Second Avenue fell to the ground.


After it was all over, Firefighter Shepherd recalled thinking that he was glad he had chosen to wear cotton pants that day.


“Because if I’m going to burn, I don’t want polyester,” he said.





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