by TANANGACHI MFUNI and JONATHAN LEMIRE
Firefighter Michael Tompkins stared up at the flames shooting out a third-floor Bronx apartment and the panicked man dangling his 9-month-old son out the window.
"I'm going to drop the baby! I'm going to drop the baby and jump!" the father yelled, according to Tompkins, of Ladder 39.
"I just kept telling him not to jump," said Tompkins, recalling the terrifying early-morning scene on Lowerre Place in Williamsbridge on Thursday.
Tompkins said he frantically set up a ladder as the heat from the blaze grew more intense. He then climbed it to save the baby and the father.
"Ten or 20 seconds more and he was jumping," Tompkins said. "It was hot and he didn't care."
The suspicious fire ignited just after 1:40 a.m. and quickly consumed the rowhouse.
"I saw a man at the window holding a baby saying, 'I got to drop the child! The flames are on me!'" said neighbor Darnell Bailey, a minister at Cathedral United Baptist Church. "It was horrible."
After smashing through a chicken-wire fence to get to the back of the house, Tompkins spotted a hysterical woman pointing desperately toward her child above.
Though his ladder was not secure against the house wall, Tompkins raced up the rungs in time to have the father toss the child toward him.
"I grabbed [the baby] by the back of the neck kind of like a dog carrying its puppy," Tompkins said. "I thought I was going to drop [the child] onto a fence."
With one hand holding the child and the other gripping the ladder, Tompkins nearly slipped as he descended, he said. After getting the baby to safety, he helped the man escape, too.
The couple, the child and a few firefighters were treated for minor injuries, FDNY officials said.
Fire marshals believe that the three-alarm blaze was set deliberately.
A law enforcement source said cops had been called to the address hours earlier to break up a fight. The source said the blaze may have been lit by gang members who believed that a first-floor tenant owed them money.
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