NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Off-duty FDNY firefighter Joe Pendergast was driving to work on Friday morning when he came across an apartment fire in Brooklyn, jumped out of his vehicle and rescued a man still inside.
Pendergast, 33, was driving to his fire station Ladder 113 in Prospect Lefferts Garden at about 7:30 a.m. on Friday when he noticed heavy smoke coming out of 152 Parkside Ave., a four-story building in Flatbush.
The Staten Islander pulled over to assess the scene, and when he heard a woman scream, he jumped into action.
“All the fires I’ve been to, it’s basically just, what do I need to do?,” the seven-year FDNY veteran told 1010 WINS/WCBS 880. “What’s possible, what’s not possible?”
He took off his shirt and ran inside of the building, at which point he found a man searching for his dog through thick smoke. He got the man out just in the nick of time.
“I pretty much told him ‘we need to go right now,’ and that’s kind of when his fight or flight kicked in I think, and he started making his way to the front door,” Pendergast said. “That’s when the other e-bike that was on fire I guess blew up, and it just turned into a giant fireball.”
Firefighters found two e-bikes at the scene, and fire marshals officially determined later on Friday that a lithium ion battery was the cause of the blaze.
Reinforcements responded, and the firefighters rescued several dogs and got the fire under control by around 8:30 a.m.
Pendergast and another firefighter were taken to NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County to treat minor injuries, and the rescued man was also transported to an area hospital for treatment.
The off-duty firefighter told 1010 WINS/WCBS 880 that he suffered second-degree burns to his hands, but that he would be alright and was happy that he was in the right place at the right time.