Firefighter Is Dead After Fall From Brooklyn Roof
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A firefighter plunged four stories to his death while fighting a fire sparked by a lit cigarette yesterday, Fire Department officials said.
Daniel Pudjak, 23, slipped while stepping onto the roof of a four-story building in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn at about 5 p.m., fire officials said. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, where he was later pronounced dead.
At a press conference held at the hospital shortly after Pudjak died, Mayor Bloomberg said the young firefighter had died unnecessarily because the blaze could have been prevented.
An unidentified woman allegedly neglected to fully extinguish a cigarette she discarded in the windowsill of a fourth-story loft and it ignited the blaze, fire officials said. Officials at the press conference said the woman had not been criminally charged.
Smoke and flames emanating from the window made the fire appear larger than it was, fire officials said.
Pudjak, a two-year veteran of the fire department and a designated roof specialist, was sent to the top of the building to cut ventilation holes to curtail the blaze, fire officials said. Carrying a saw and about 100 pounds of equipment, Pudjak slipped while stepping onto a bulkhead on the roof from an extended ladder, fire officials said.
