off duty firefighter rescues 9 people, a parrot, and dogs
Off-duty firefighter rescued 9 people, a parrot and a few dogs in Hurricane Sandy
Miranda Leitsinger / NBC News
Joe Adinolfi, an off-duty firefighter, rescued nine people from 5 feet floodwaters and a raging fire when Hurricane Sandy struck his tiny seaside community of Breezy Point, N.Y., on Monday night.
By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News
BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- A raging fire was creeping closer and closer to Joe Adinolfi’s home when he decided to get out.
He packed his phone and wallet into a life vest, since there was also about 5 feet of standing water outside his home due to Hurricane Sandy, and thought he would try to reach a refuge within his tiny seaside community of Breezy Point on the southwest corner of Long Island.
But then he heard a cry for help from the parking lot in front of his home.
“I heard people out there in the parking I couldn’t see calling for help, and when I got over there, closer, I saw it was these elderly women,” said Adinolfi, a father of three girls who was off-duty from his work as a firefighter that Monday night when the storm struck.
Adinolfi, 48, waded into the waist-high water around 10 p.m. where he found three women clutching onto the back of an SUV, one holding so tightly onto a kennel with several small dogs that her hands were bleeding. The women also had an African Grey Parrot.
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“They were crying, ‘please help me,’” he recalled them saying. He replied, “’I’m coming ladies. We’re going to get to my house, don’t you worry.’”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/02/14881881-off-duty-firefighter-rescued-9-people-a-parrot-and-a-few-dogs-in-hurricane-sandy?lit
= new reply since forum marked as read
Anybody that wades through waist-deep water for an hour herding old ladies, disabled people, dogs, and a parrot and brings them to safety to his home is the quintessential hero in my eyes.
Well done, sir. 
Too bad he couldn't save Connor and Brandon. 
Adinolfi, 48, waded into the waist-high water around 10 p.m. where he found three women clutching onto the back of a SUV, one holding so tightly onto a kennel with several small dogs that her hands were bleeding. The women also had an African Grey Parrot.
“You had to see the dogs and I was carrying that thing, they were like half underwater swimming in this cage. But we got’em all out,” he quipped.
One of the dogs bit him, but looks like he forgave him. 
