Just as he finished snapping a photo of a couple on a New York City street, an off-duty FDNY firefighter heard a blast and ran a block to the find the chaotic scene of Thursday's massive explosion.
"As I got closer to the corner I could feel the concussion bounced off the building across the street and kind of hit me in the chest and I said, ‘Oh man, it’s a big one'”, Squad 41 Firefighter Mike Shepard told the New York Times.
As he arrived at the scene, with injured people laying in the street, he said "Oh man, this is bad...I got to check above."
Along with a few bystanders, Shepard coached a girl down the fire escape.
Then he scaled the fire escape to beg search the debris.
“As I was going up. People were yelling, ‘There’s fire in there.’”
He found extensive damage on the second floor and continued up to the third and fourth floors.
“I was yelling, ‘Anybody in here?’” Shepard recalled.
He continued to search from the windows, which he had to force open as the smoke changed from brown to black and flames were visible.
“Now, it started, now it’s lighting up all over.”
“All the people were screaming from the street, ‘You got to get down, the fire is getting big!’”
He could hear the sirens of responding fire truck getting closer as he descended the building.
“I just kind of kept my cool, and got down,” he said. “I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got down and the heat was hitting me in the face, and the smoke. I said, `Thank God I didn’t have to pull somebody out.’ But I knew, I saw the truck and the engine from the fire escape, coming, so I knew the truck could have put the bucket up to me if I needed to.”
