Two Brave Heroes Returning to Work

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By ELIZABETH WOLFF

October 28, 2007 -- His lieutenant dying on the concrete below and no ropes to help him, firefighter Eugene Stolowski threw rookie Brendan Cawley out the window of a burning Bronx building.

"You're going to be all right," Stolowski kept assuring Cawley - who had not yet spent a month on the job - before the rookie plummeted the 50 feet to the cold ground below.

Then, the smoldering heat behind him, Stolowski hurled himself out the same window, hitting the ground feet first at 40 mph.

"I wasn't thinking about dying, but I wasn't thinking about living, either," he recalled.

Two of their fellow firefighters who also jumped from the burning five-story building died that Jan. 23, 2005. They soon learned that at a Brooklyn blaze that day a third firefighter lost his life. The day became known as Black Sunday, marking the worst loss of life for the FDNY since 9/11 and the first time since 1918 that firefighters had died in separate incidents on the same day.

Now Ladder Co. 27's Stolowski, 36, and Cawley, 33, are ready to return to the job they love.

For Stolowski, it's a day he never imagined would come.

His legs and ribs were fractured, and his shattered pelvis was pushed out from his mangled torso.

His heart stopped.

And more grisly still, Stolowki's skull had become detached from his spine in what doctors said was an internal decapitation.

Doctors told his pregnant wife there was only a 5 percent chance of survival.

Stolowski kept fighting.

He was paralyzed for more than two months, and his mother was convinced he would never walk again.

He hobbled along.

Doctors took out his gall bladder, repaired his splintered teeth, put his pelvis back together and fused his jangled vertebrae.

There were 12 surgeries, 20 doctors, three titanium rods and donor ligaments galore - but today Stolowski can drive to the grocery store, take his three little girls to Disneyland and think about what's next.

"I was never supposed to be alive, I was never to walk," he told The Post from his home in upstate Florida, in Orange County. "I'm walking.

"Now I want to work. I got hurt on the job, and they think I should hate the job, but I love it."

Stolowski says he's meeting with officials next month to work out exactly what kind of job he'll have when he returns in January. What he wants is to be the face of the FDNY's heroism, perhaps as a kind of motivational ambassador for the department.

"When a firefighter gets seriously hurt, they die," Stolowski said. "The department hasn't had so much experience with the seriously injured who want to go back to work.

"I think they would like it if I just retired. But I can help them.

"My wife says I'm never going back to active duty, but if my doctors give me the OK, I'd go back to fighting fires tomorrow."

Cawley will return for his big brother, Michael, a firefighter who died on 9/11. He, like Stolowski, is a medical miracle, having suffered lung damage, a concussion and busted ribs.

He will return to firefighting next month - he has been on light duty since 2006 - after he finishes a refresher course at the Fire Academy.

Cawley, who quit a cushy advertising job to join the FDNY, now gets a second chance to fill his brother's boots - and to honor his fallen comrades from Black Sunday, John Bellew and Curtis Meyran.

Joe DiBernardo and Jeffrey Cool, who leaped from a nearby window in the burning Bronx building, have since retired.

"They're healing in their way, but definitely going back to work is something that will help me recover emotionally," Stolowski said.

"It helps me. It helps Brendan. It helps everyone."