Family of 5 seriously injured after Bron...

Family of 5 seriously injured after Bron...

Danny Iudici/stg

FDNY work to fight a 2 alarm fire on the 6th floor of 50 E. 191 Street in the Bronx.

A family of five including a 3-month-old boy were seriously hurt after they were saved from their burning Bronx apartment early Saturday.

The 22-year-old mother and her infant son made it out of the E. 191st St. building with the help of a neighbor soon after the fire started about 3:15 a.m., witnesses and officials said.

But the 28-year-old father and the couples two daughters ages 2 and 3 were later pulled out of the sixth-floor blaze by a crew of firefighters, officials said.

A team of paramedics and EMTs rushed the family from the Fordham Heights building to Jacobi Medical Center. The father and his two daughters were in critical condition.

The mother and her baby boy were listed in stable condition.

Feres Shokias, 31, who lives on the fifth floor said he looked outside when he heard a window break and saw the roaring flames shooting out of the windows above.

He darted out of his apartment, but found the panicked mother lying on the floor, holding a baby.

My babies are up there! the woman wailed.

She was carrying the infant, the little boy, so I helped her carry him downstairs, Shokias recalled.

Once the crying mother and her child were outside, the heroic neighbor turned to go back into the building to help the rest of her family, he said.

I tried to go up the stairs to get the other kids but there was too much smoke, he said.

Frances Rivera, 23, said she woke to the mothers cries for help echoing in the hallway, but was forced to climb down the fire escape because she couldnt see through the smoke.

Once downstairs, she ran to the weeping mother.

I was nervous, because I know the girl, Rivera said. I saw her outside and she was frightened...We were just waiting for her kids and husband. I was trying to console her.

The mother told Rivera that she awoke to a kitchen full of smoke before waking her husband. The father gave the newborn to his wife and sent her down the stairs before he could grab their two daughters, she said.

Three smoke eaters from Ladder Co. 56 and Rescue Co. 3 later pulled out the father and his two daughters.

We had heavy fire on arrival, said FDNY Battalion Chief Tom Riley. The father and the two children were inside the apartment and had to be rescued.

A man who lives in the building said the father looked like he was severely burned.

I saw the guy, he looked bad, he was burned bad, said Jairo Troncoso, 34.

A neighbor who lives on the fire floor said his apartment and the entire hallway filled with smoke from the fire.

I woke up to get a drink of water and I saw smoke in my apartment, said Jose Louis, 23. Then I opened the door and when I opened the door I saw the whole hallway was black.

Louis said he woke up his family and they went down the fire escape. When they got down onto Morris Ave, they saw the inferno above.

The whole apartment was going up, lots of flames were shooting out the windows, Louis said.