Brooklyn Firefighters Rescue Old Lady From Burning Bathroom

Photo courtesy of the FDNY

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — An apartment fire Tuesday afternoon on Sterling Place near Utica Avenue would have killed a 75-year-old woman in the building had it not been for the firefighters who went in after her, according to the Fire Department of New York (FDNY).

Members of Ladder 120 “battled heavy smoke conditions and followed sounds of distress to locate her in a second floor bathroom,” the FDNY said on its Facebook page.

The old lady was one of three people pulled from the inferno inside 1481 Sterling Pl. by firefighters Tuesday.

All three emerged with minor injuries and are recovering at Kings County Hospital, the FDNY said.

New York Daily News photographer Todd Maisel was at the scene. He captured one particularly moving, almost dystopian image of a displaced child standing outside his or her charred home in the afternoon’s sudden downpour.

In another image, a firefighter tosses a burnt mattress out the third-story window into the rain.

Two Crown Heights families were left homeless by the fire, Maisel reported via Twitter.