LIFE-THREATENING: Flames billow out of a fifth-floor window yesterday. (John Robinson)
GREAT SAVE: One-year-old Jane Ferreida is carried out alive after being dangled out of a window by her mom in order to breathe and then going into cardiac arrest in yesterday’s fire. (
)
A Bronx blaze turned a 27-story apartment building into a smoke-filled hell yesterday, injuring dozens of people — including a baby girl whose mom dangled her out of a window.
The three-alarm fire kicked up around 8 a.m. in a fifth-floor apartment on East 149th Street near Grand Concourse. Thirty-seven people were hurt, officials said — five seriously, including 1-year-old Jane Ferreida and a firefighter.
“Before we could get a hose line in position the fire extended up the outside of the building” and up to the sixth floor, said FDNY Chief Jack Mooney.
Smoke rose to the 21st floor, where the desperate mom, Ani De La Cruz, 29, dangled her little daughter from a hallway window, a witness said.
“It was chaotic,” said James Smith, 49.
“It was coming up rapidly. We opened the door and the smoke rushed in so we shut the door and I put rags under it. [My neighbor] was dangling the baby out the window to breathe.”
The soot-covered baby, who was found by rescuers passed out on the floor with her father Miguel Martinez Ferreida, 38, went into cardiac arrest, said Anthony Stefania, aide to the Division 6 chief.
Her mother was bleeding, “because she was leaning out of the broken window in the hallway. We were yelling, ‘Don’t drop the baby! Go back in the apartment!’ ”
The child and her mom were in stable condition last night at Jacobi Medical Center. The father, a taxi dispatcher, was in critical condition.
The blaze erupted in the apartment of Samantha Covel, 48. “I ran with only the clothes on my back,” she said.
It took 130 firefighters to knock down the blaze, which was under control at 9:45 a.m. Investigators said the fire was sparked by a child playing with a cigarette lighter.
“Oh, my God! It looked like a movie. The flame was intense,” said Millie Rodriguez, 42.
“I saw people knocking out their windows. It seems like they wanted to jump. The firefighters were telling them, ‘Go back in! Go back in!’ ”