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It was an arson fire in a Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone, and the flames were so intense that Firefighter Peter Demontreaux was himself ablaze by the time he led a trapped resident to an escape window.
His mates from Brooklyn's Ladder Co. 132 turned a hose on Demontreaux's burning jacket and boots and rushed to help him. "I thought Pete was dead," Firefighter Richard Myers said later.
For his part, Demontreaux thought more people could be in danger. His personal conflagration extinguished, but suffering burns of the face and back, he plunged back into searching through flames, smoke and noxious fumes.
"We were all trained for stuff like this, so I didn't panic," he told the Daily News after the blaze was under control. "I really didn't think about anything besides helping those people."
Many were the people helped by the FDNY early Monday on Putnam Ave. All 11 of the building's occupants survived, though nine were injured, three critically. Three of Demontreaux's colleagues were also hurt.
In Demontreaux's telling, FDNY training is responsible for the lives saved. True enough, but heroism had a lot to do with it as well.
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