An FDNY firefighter died Sunday in a raging three-alarm blaze that injured seven of his colleagues in Brooklyn, officials said.
Timothy Klein, 31, died while working to knock down a fire at a home on Avenue N near E. 108th St. in Canarsie that erupted about 1:40 p.m.
The six-year veteran was critically injured when the building collapsed, the FDNY announced.
Acting FDNY commissioner Laura Kavanagh said Klein — assigned to Ladder 170 in Canarsie — was the 1,157th member of the department to die in the line of duty.
One injured civilian was treated on the scene.
The fire was quickly elevated to a third-alarm blaze after flames engulfed the house, the FDNY said.
A helicopter hovered over the scene, while hundreds of neighbors crowded around the emergency tape blocking off the street.
Paul Jackson, who lives behind the badly burned home, watched as flames quickly tore through the house.
“I see the fire coming out, at first it was on one side of the house, and it came to the other side of the house,” said Jackson, 28. “By the time I saw it, it was already too late, like half of the house was burning down.”
Neighbors watched as firefighters were pulled out of the home on stretchers.
“One was unconscious, one had a lot of black stuff in his face, a lot of dark pieces of the house,” said a neighbor, who did not give his name. “It looked very terrible.”
First responders were performing CPR on the firefighter, he said.
Jackson saw the critically injured firefighter geared up and ready to run into the flames. Shortly after, he was also carried out of the house on a stretcher, blue-faced and “lifeless.”
“They pumped,” said Jackson, 28. “His stomach went up, it was basically like they were trying to save him.”
Euline Robin, 74, another longtime neighborhood resident, described a chaotic scene.
“By the time we came, the firemen were running back and forth, trying to hook up to get water, that’s what I saw. And then they started,” she said. “I saw them doing CPR on somebody, but I don’t know who it was. They were pumping his chest.”
The FDNY spokesperson had no information on the conditions of the injured firefighters.
As of Sunday afternoon, 33 FDNY units and 106 firefighters had responded to the blaze. Firefighters were still working at the scene Sunday evening, the FDNY said.
Mayor Adams was briefed at the site before heading to Brookdale Hospital for further updates, his press secretary said in a tweet.
___
© 2022 New York Daily News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
