Off Duty Fireman makes Daring Train Track Rescue

 

 

What do you do when you see others in distress? Are you the type to stand and stare or roll up your sleeves and get to work?

Well for this off-duty NYC fireman, the answer was easy:

Adam Rivera, 30, pulled an unconscious man from subway tracks as a train was barreling into the Manhattan station.

“This is my job,” Rivera, who works for Engine 10 in lower Manhattan, thought to himself. “I’m a New York City firefighter - I’m not going to stand there and do nothing!”

Around 10 p.m., Rivera had just finished celebrating his seventh anniversary with his girlfriend when he noticed the man lying unconscious below the opposite platform of the Union Square station.

Rivera shot across the tracks - leaping over two third rails (loaded with 600 deadly volts of electricity) and through a divider - to drag the victim out of harm’s way. Two good Samaritans helped lift the man to safety before a Q train pulled two-thirds of the way into the station.

“There was no time to be afraid,” Rivera said. “You can’t waste time hesitating. You just move, and the thinking stops.”

The victim, Marco Delemo, 45, was in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital with head injuries. It was unclear how he ended up on the tracks.

Rivera, meanwhile, was lauded as a hero by his co-workers.

“He put his own life in danger,” said Battalion Chief Kevin Woods, a 19-year veteran.

“He saved that man’s life.”

Source: NY Daily News

Beth