by MELISSA JANE KRONFELD, MURRAY WEISS and DAN MANGAN
A firefighter crawled through blinding smoke to save an unconscious woman from her burning Upper East Side apartment yesterday.
"It's my first rescue," said the 30-year-old hero, Michael Colombo. "It's exciting. It's what you come on the job for. It feels good, the satisfaction of helping someone make it through."
Colombo, of Babylon, L.I., is assigned to Engine No. 8/Ladder Co. 2 of the 8th Battalion.
About 2 a.m. yesterday, the station crew raced to a fire in an apartment on the 11th floor at 320 E. 54th St.
Colombo, accompanied by firefighter Al Barry, said, "There was no time to wait for the hose line, so we went in without the protection of the hose line, which you're really not supposed to do. But we couldn't wait.
"About 10 crawl paces into the apartment, I found her," Colombo said, referring to the 59-year-old woman who lived there. "She was hunched over and unconscious on the floor in the living room."
The woman was reported to be doing well after treatment for smoke inhalation at the Cornell Burn Unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
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