Public Employee Press

Staffer a hero in January blaze

On a blistering cold Jan. 9, DC 37 staffer José González sprang into action in a valiant effort to save lives. As the Eligibility Enrollment Clerk II was getting ready to turn in for the night at his Brooklyn apartment, he got a telephone call with bad news: A two-alarm fire was spreading at his girlfriend’s nearby apartment house.

He jumped out of bed and rushed to the three-story building on Wilson Avenue. Mr. González got his girlfriend and a small child to safety on the building’s roof by climbing a ladder.

There they waited for an hour until the flames were under control. “My feet and hands were freezing. They were turning blue,” he said. Unfortunately, a 29-year-old man with Down’s syndrome died of injuries that he suffered in the blaze, which fire marshals classified as arson.