A heroic off-duty FDNY city firefighter had two career days in one week.
Firefighter Stefon Douglas, wearing a T-shirt and shorts while wielding a garden hose, rescued a trapped child from a burning Brooklyn building after arriving home from his shift Sunday night. And he found his way through the black smoke and flames wearing a breathing apparatus left in his car trunk from an appearance just days earlier at an FDNY career day event.
FDNY Firefighter Stefon Douglas of #Engine276 (FDNY)
“I just remembered I had it in the trunk,” the 33-year-old firefighter told the Daily News. “It’s just how the stars aligned. It’s just crazy how it all worked out ... I thought, ‘Man, I just saved a girl.’ It’s unreal. This kind of thing happens in movies.”
The six-year FDNY vet, who lives down the block on Kings Highway from the two-story fire scene, had just parked his car after a shift at Engine Co. 276 when he noticed the smoke around 6 p.m.
The front of the residence was too hot to go inside when Douglas tried to enter, so he ran around the back and commandeered a garden hose from a man trying in vain to extinguish the blaze.
Douglas, wearing the breathing equipment, stretched the hose inside the first floor of the two-story residence, knocking out pockets of fire by putting his thumb over the nozzle to get more water pressure. As he maneuvered along the first floor hallway wall, everything felt hot to the touch, said Douglas.
And then Douglas recalled hearing soft sounds coming from inside the house.
He followed the whimpering through the smoke, using his left hand to stay close to the wall, and came to the bathroom door.
“She had her feet between the tub and the toilet,” recounted Douglas. “A little girl, maybe three or four years old. She didn’t say a word to me, and she was still crying and whimpering when I brought her out.
Firefighters respond to a fire at 4545 Kings Highway in Brooklyn on Sunday, June 5, 2022. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)
“I’m still in shock. I came out sweating.”
The little girl and her mother — who was brought out of the burning house by other firefighters — were taken to Staten Island University Hospital North, while one firefighter was taken to SUNY Downstate University Hospital.
The mom died early Tuesday, an FDNY source said. Her name was not immediately released.
The fire was declared under control at 6:37 p.m.
Douglas remained astounded by the circumstances of the rescue. He typically works a 24-hour tour, but instead worked only a day shift last Sunday and was instead at the scene. If he’d made it home five minutes earlier, Douglas would have never seen the smoke and run toward the flames.
“I can’t believe we did this,” he said. “But this is just what we do. This is what we do.”
Douglas has a busy schedule ahead, too: He’s scheduled for two more upcoming career days.
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News