Photos show firefighters battling deadly East Village blaze

Dramatic photos of FDNY firefighters battling the 2015 East Village gas explosion were shown to jurors in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Photos show the smokeeaters barely escaping moments before the blaze reduced a row of historic buildings to rubble.

FDNY Lt. Matthew Cassidy can be seen climbing from a bucket onto the 5th-floor fire escape of 121 Second Ave., according to the shots, which were taken by a New York Post photographer.

Cassidy testified Tuesday that he entered the top-floor apartment through the window, as prosecutors displayed pictures of the heroic effort at the manslaughter trial of three people charged in the blast that killed two and injured 13.

The lieutenant told Manhattan Supreme Court jurors that he used his hand to feel his way along the wall of the smoke-filled room looking for victims when he heard an alarming rumble.

“It sounded like a collapse going on,” he testified of the March 26 conflagration. “I heard the floor moving and went to the fire escape and jumped out into the tower bucket.”

That’s when he noticed another firefighter, Richard Resto, with his arms outstretched on the roof of 123 Second Ave. poking out of massive plumes of black smoke. Resto was trapped.

With only seconds to spare, Cassidy moved the bucket toward the overpowering heat emanating from the adjoining buildings, which were almost completely engulfed in flames, and hauled Resto to safety.

Moments later flames shot through the roof stretching 50 feet into the sky, and 123 Second Ave. crumbled into oblivion as the two men remained suspended in the air inside the tower bucket.

FDNY Deputy Chief Michael McPartland was watching the scene unfold from the street and said, “It was something out of a Hollywood movie. As soon as he [Resto] dove in, the whole place blew up.”

Prosecutors say the devastating explosion and blaze originated inside the basement of 121 Second Ave. and was caused by an illegal gas hook-up put in place by landlord Maria Hrynenko, contractor Dilber Kukic and unlicensed plumber Athanasios “Jerry” Ioannidis. Hrynenko owned two of the three destroyed buildings.

Moments before Cassidy hauled Resto to safety, McPartland ordered all firefighters to evacuate the three Second Avenue buildings that ended at the corner of East 7th Street. “I’ve seen a lot of fires over the years and something didn’t click right,” he said. “I had a bad feeling.”

Just 90 seconds later, he heard another loud explosion, and that’s when the thick clouds of black smoke were displaced by flames and the first building collapsed. The two others soon followed. In 2016, Cassidy was awarded the Albert S. Johnston Medal for saving Resto.

Earlier in the day, jurors saw video taken a day after the blast revealing the extent of the damage. First responders are shown sifting through a mound of smoldering steel, wood, brick and glass, as a cadaver dog wanders the scene, searching for human remains.

They wouldn’t find the bodies of Nicholas Figueroa, 23, and Moises Locon, 27, for two more days. They were buried deep under the rubble.

“It’s a painstaking operation, brick by brick,” McPartland said of the search for the victims. “We learned all that after 9/11.”

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