E40FDNYL35
01-30-2004, 05:51 AM
Firefighter John Barry felt the scalding water soak his bunker gear as he battled flames ripping through the Queens house. But he did not know his knees were burned to the bone until he wriggled out of his wet clothes. Firefighter Anna Schemerhorn was venting the windows of an Alphabet City tenement engulfed in flames when red-hot debris slid down her hood, searing the back of her neck with third-degree burns. Firefighter Tony Palminteri was carrying a hose into a burning apartment in Brooklyn, when the blistering heat forced him to kneel in water heated to steaming by the flames. He was left with bubbling second-degree burns on his knees. All three firefighters are currently in the burn unit at Weill Cornell Medical Center - an unusually high number. Barry, 38, was on the second floor of 12-11 30th Road, in Astoria, minutes before it disintegrated. He had to climb down a ladder to get out."If we had been further back on the floor, we would have gone down with it," said Barry, a four-year FDNY veteran."There was a lot of fire, and the water spraying in the line had really heated up," said Barry. "I felt it right away. There's nothing you can do about it, so I stayed in."He will have surgery this morning to have a large swath of skin taken from his thighs to graft over his knees. Barry was not the only firefighter hurt in the Jan. 22 arson blaze. Ladder 138 Capt. John Maloney bit through his tongue, broke his ribs and cracked his spine when the burning second floor collapsed, covering him in scorched pilings. He was hailed as a hero for getting his men out alive. Palminteri's burns, suffered in the East New York apartment fire he battled Wednesday morning, are almost identical to Barry's - caused by steaming water seeping into his gear."I didn't feel it right away, but I knew that there were burns there when I got outside," said Palminteri, 35, a nine-year veteran assigned to Engine 236. Palminteri was featured in the Daily News for being part of a daring underground rescue that saved a Staten Island man in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001."Now I just want to get out of the hospital and get back to the house," he said. He meant the firehouse, not his , 38, was burned last Friday night battling a blaze at 42 Avenue B that gutted the five-story building."Somehow, an ember got back in my hood. I felt it. I knew it was bad. But there was too much going on to stop," said Schemerhorn, a seven-year FDNY veteran assigned to Ladder 9 in Chinatown. "When I took my gear off, my lieutenant looked and told me it was a good burn."Since Jan. 1, 513 firefighters have been injured at 307 fires around the city."It's been real busy," Schemerhorn told The News from the hospital yesterday. "People have told me this is typical of the old days."