Off-duty FDNY firefighter recalls running to danger, scaling fire escape as East Village building crumbled

BY BEN KOCHMAN , JENNIFER FERMINO , CORKY SIEMASZKO

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, March 27, 2015, 7:39 PM

Firefighter Mike Shepherd, who was off-duty when he rushed to the scene of the East Village blast on Thursday, spoke to reporters Friday at Squad Company 41 in the Bronx.

It was while looking up at smoke and flames billowing from the burning Second Ave. building and listening to the screams for help that Mike Shepherd suddenly transformed into Spider-Man.

As hundreds of New Yorkers looked on in slack-jawed amazement, the off-duty firefighter began climbing up the fire escape of the crumbling structure toward the top floors to make sure everybody was out.

By the time Shepherd reached the third floor and started banging on the windows, the smoke was blinding.

“I yelled,” Shepherd recalled Friday at Squad Company 41 in the Bronx, where he is based. “No one answered.”

So Shepherd kept climbing, thinking about his wife, his kids and grandkids. But now the smoke and the searing heat were too much and he didn’t have on fire gear.

“People on the street were yelling at me, ‘You have got to get down!” he said.

Reluctantly, Shepherd climbed down — but not before his heroics were immortalized on video footage that hit YouTube before he reached the ground.

Shepherd said he could see the fire trucks approaching and figured, “They could send up the bucket and bring me down.”

VIEW GALLERYDramatic scenes from the aftermath of East Village fire

But he made it down on his own and took one last look at the inferno.

“I looked in to see if anyone was inside, but I couldn't see anything,” he said.

Minutes later, 121 Second Ave. came crashing down.

Shepherd, 47, a firefighter for 16 years, is no stranger to heroics.

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“Our off-duty firefighter had already been cited six times for bravery,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. “Now it looks this will be his seventh.”

Shepherd, who is also a former Daily News Golden Gloves champ, said he wished he could have located the two men police believe are still trapped in the rubble.

“It’s disheartening when you try as much as you can, and then you find out that someone else was in there,” he said.

Shepherd said he was at a restaurant on Seventh St. and had just volunteered to take a phone photo of a young couple when he “heard a loud explosion.”

Just like he did on 9/11, Shepherd ran toward the danger.

Shepherd said when he got to the building the second floor was already collapsed and he could see a woman on the third floor struggling to lower the fire escape ladder.

“She was panicking,” he said. “She couldn’t do it. And I just had to calm her down.”

Just then another man appeared out of nowhere and helped the woman get down.