by Deborah Young
It was the kind of all-terrain call that city firefighters prepare for and practice endlessly in drills but rarely perform in real time.
Although the highly trained emergency responders could not save the life of a middle-aged man who went into cardiac arrest today while fishing off the craggy rocks of a Rosebank beach, the rescue effort was nothing short of Herculean.
Firefighters from Engine Co. 152 performed CPR for more than 20 minutes while specialists cut a path into the steep, 40-foot hill at the end of Scarboro Avenue so they could remove the victim by stretcher into an ambulance.
The fifty-something man, identified last night by an FDNY source as Wong Mianiyio, was pronounced dead after being transported to Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton.
"When we saw him, he wasn't responsive," said Firefighter Sean Watt of Engine 152, who had been conducting routine surveillance of some vacated buildings nearby at Waterview Court at about 1:30 p.m. when two fishermen companions ran up the hill, desperate for help. "They couldn't speak any English; they just motioned at the back of their head," Watt said.
It was purely by chance that Watt and his fellow firefighters were on the scene; they were conducting surveillance and enforcing a vacate order at Waterview Court, where million-dollar homes nearly tumbled into New York Harbor last year when a retaining wall gave way.
Thinking somebody had slipped into the sea and was gravely injured, he and his fellow Bravest careered down the hill, trampling trees and scrambling over rocks. They found the man lying awkwardly on the rocks and immediately positioned him to perform CPR.
Specialists from Rescue 77 and 79, trained in what is known as "high-angle rescue," arrived within moments, felling trees with chain saws to allow for the victim to be transported to an ambulance idling on the street.
More often associated with alpine terrain, emergencies that require such sure footing are not common in the city, but firefighters are trained and ready, said Staten Island's Commander Deputy Chief James E. Leonard, who was also on scene.
"This was a difficult rescue," he noted, as he looked down the hill onto the spot where the man had collapsed.
For Lt. Jason Zawatsky of Engine 152, whose day began with a drill at 5:45 a.m., and who had been scheduled to conduct routine inspections, the emergency was a turn in the unpredictable, multitextured duty of a firefighter.
"You go from filling out paperwork to trying to [help] somebody unconscious on the beach," he mused.
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