Bronx Fire: Cancer Patient Praises Firefighters For Rescuing Him After He Collapsed In Hallway

A man with terminal cancer believes he would have lost his life had it not been for the brave firefighters who saved him from the deadly Bronx blaze on Jan. 9. Joseph Brannigan, 61, said he felt like he won “the lottery of life” when he was pulled out of the inferno that killed 19 people, including nine children, and injured dozens.

Recalling the incident, the retired nurse said he was in the sixth-floor apartment with his nephew, Michael Joseph, when the fire started spreading through the building in West Bronx. They immediately knew they had to leave as smoke filled his apartment just before 11 a.m., according to the New York Post.

"My nephew said, 'Joey, we have to get down the stairs,' and I said, ‘We can’t. There’s too much smoke in the hallway,'" Brannigan said. "He said, 'C’mon, we’re going to die in here.'"

The elderly man was separated from Joseph, 32, as they were trying to escape the flames. “As we tried to get out of the apartment, he grabbed my hand,” Brannigan recalled. “I lost his hand, and I said, ‘Where are you?’”

Brannigan, who is battling terminal bladder cancer, remembers collapsing to the floor in the hallway before firefighters came to his aid.

“Next thing I know, the firemen are dragging me into my apartment,” he said. “The firemen smashed all the windows and put oxygen on me.”

“After [they] got me out of the building, I kept saying, ‘Where’s Mike?’” Brannigan added. “He ran into me, and we hugged each other.”

Although he lost his possessions in the fire, Brannigan is glad he lived to tell the tale. “We won the lottery of life, the big jackpot,” he said. “We lost everything in the fire. We lost everything. [But] we are the richest people in the world because we won the lottery of life today.”

Brannigan revealed that Joseph has been taking care of him as he battles the terminal illness. “He wouldn’t be alive right now if I didn’t send them,” said Joseph, who revealed that he sent firefighters upstairs to rescue his uncle.

“People were being injured, stepped on,” the nephew recalled. “This is outrageous. I don’t understand how this can happen. Right now I want to know how this fire started.”

Following the incident, New York City Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro said a malfunctioning electric space heater triggered the deadly late-morning fire that quickly spread through a door that was either left open or failed to automatically close after residents escaped, according to NBC News.

“The marshals have determined through physical evidence, through firsthand accounts from the residents, that this fire started in a bedroom in a portable electric heater,” Nigro said.

Authorities arrived at the scene around 11 a.m., and about 200 firefighters worked to put out the flames by around 1 p.m., the fire department said.