Two workers hurt in Newark Airport fire

A disaster drill at Newark International Airport yesterday turned into a real-life rescue operation when an unrelated electrical explosion burned two workers, officials said.

Jake Paterek, 47, an electrical foreman, and co-worker Donna Fornoff, 42, were at work in a small room inside the FedEx building just before 11 a.m. when a metal object fell onto live wires and caused an explosion that set the workers' clothes ablaze.

"They tried to put the fire out on each other by rolling on the ground, but there was very little room on the floor of this room," said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority.

"It was about the size of a small coat closet. They eventually got outside the room and rolled on the ground and patted the fire out on each other," he said.

Emergency crews from Essex and Union counties and teams from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Union Hospital, who were practicing a response to a mock crash of a Boeing 727 aircraft, interrupted the drill to assist the injured workers.

Paterek received first- and second-degree burns over 55% of his body and was listed in critical condition at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J. Fornoff was treated for burns to her hands and arms and released.

News Credit: The New York Daily News