Results tagged “rescue”

A pigeon in Brooklyn was recently rescued by some animal lovers after being "dangled upside down from a piece of string that was caught around her leg and tangled on a tree branch two stories above a busy sidewalk."

Terrifying! There are reportedly tiny, pink, hairless rodents falling out of their nests and, lucky for them, into the hands of rescuers. The Daily News reports that the number of baby squirrels in town has grown, and Sean Casey at Animal Rescue in Windsor Terrace says it's because "The warmer climate is allowing squirrels to breed later into the season, and so they have more babies. That's probably what's been causing the influx."

With Sad Rat and Sad Panda making us all so sad, it's nice to have Happy Manatee around. Ilya was rescued from the cold clutches of New Jersey earlier this week, and flown down to the more manatee-friendly state of Florida yesterday. The NY Post reports that he is expected to make a full recovery, and a rep at the US Fish and Wildlife Service confirms: "He is safely home in Florida, and currently in a nice pool at the Miami Seaquarium."

Good news! Just as the Marine Mammal Stranding Center was losing hope, Ilya the manatee has been rescued! 1010Wins reports he is currently "headed back to Florida aboard a transport jet after being rescued from murky waters near a New Jersey oil refinery."

Aww: A passerby heard a kitten mewling from a storm drain in Oceanside, NY, so firefighters worked to rescue the tiny thing from the cold, freezing weather. According to the AP, "The firefighters tried to coax the kitten out of the grate but it was too scared to move. Then they scared it with a fire extinguisher and it jumped out." The kitten was taken Hilton Animal Hospital and "put in a warming cage"—it will be up for adoption when it's deemed healthy.

Last night, a woman trying to park her car somehow ended jumping a curb and sending her car—which also carried her two teen daughters—through a railing, off the pier and into Sheepshead Bay. Luckily, a fisherman and some others heard their cries and jumped into the water to save them. Keith Gorman, a deckhand at the Sea Queen 7, told the Daily News, "I heard a car smash. I ran through the crowd and I realized that a car went on the sidewalk and into the water... I took my boots off and my jacket and jumped over the rail and into the water."

The good folks at NY1 didn't have to think too hard when it came to their "New Yorker of The Week" this week. The honor went to Horia (Billy) Cretan, the electronics store owner who ran into a burning building in the Bronx to save a 4-year-old boy on Wednesday. Cretan recounted his time with the boy as he held him, saying, "I said, 'Stay there and just keep your head up and make sure you breathe. No matter what you do don't go nowhere, you are going to be fine.'" And as if there's any question this guy is basically the most admirable man in the galaxy right now, he settled it by quickly changing the subject from his rescue and saying, "I hope somebody will come forward to help these families that suffered damage." Cretan was also honored yesterday by Bronx Beep Ruben Diaz Jr.

A Staten Island man may have prevented the rape of a local 15-year-old girl when he heard her screams from inside the woods near his home and immediately raced out wielding a baseball bat. The girl was walking to a friend's house on Cleveland Avenue in Great Kills Thursday night around 9:30 p.m. when she was dragged into the woods by her neck by a man described as a heavyset Hispanic male, about 5-foot-5 and about 200 pounds. The girl said to her attacker, "Please don't rape me," and he responded, "No, don't scream."

Seems as though our dolphin visitors are still circling around the boroughs. Earlier today we received an alert about a "distressed dolphin on S.I. side of bay." Luckily, some animal-loving folks were around to help out, and shortly after we got another alert updating the situation. This one said, "Civilians got the dolphin off the sand bar and the dolphin is headed toward the channel." Aw, way to go civilians! The Coast Guard and Mammal Rescue are staying on alert to make sure the dolphin gets to where s/he needs to go.

Yesterday, the country witnessed the dramatic reunion between formerly imprisoned journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling and their families, a reunion orchestrated by former President Bill Clinton, his former Vice President Al Gore, and the White House. Though the White House was working to secure the release of Lee and Ling, Current TV journalists who were sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp by North Korea for illegally entering the country, and had considered envoys like Gore, Bill Richardson, and Senator John Kerry, it turned out that North Korea requested former president Clinton. Lee and Ling, who were being held in a guest house, both told their families in phone calls that North Korea would consider amnesty if "an envoy in the person of President Clinton would agree to come to Pyongyang and seek their release."

Authorities think a 22-year-old man may have drowned last night, in an attempt to rescue a friend. According to the NY Post, Anthony Bolden, 21, went with his sister and his friend Jacob Reid, 20, to an area of [Jacob Riis Park] near Beach 149th Street just before 8 p.m."—a time with no lifeguards on duty. Bolden's sister said, "Jacob couldn't stay up in the water. The water kept pulling him in, so Anthony went in to get him." However, Reid managed to emerge, Bolden never did; the water reportedly had "four-foot waves" and "wind speed was nine miles per hour at the time of the 911 call." The search was suspended last night around 10 p.m. but has resumed this morning. Over the weekend, a teen died after getting caught in a Rockaways riptide and the Post raised the question of lifeguards wearing iPods while on duty.

Two off-duty Nassau Marine Officers helped save four fisherman whose "boat began sinking in shark-infested waters south of Fire Island," according to Newsday. Mike Spagnuolo and Mike Larmony, in Spagnuolo's charter boat, the Gina Ann, heard the distress call; Spagnuolo said, "We heard the panic in their voice and we knew we had to get there. We knew there were no other boats out there." The distressed boat, the Anger Management, sank minutes after the Gina Ann arrived. Anger Management captain Ray Pasieka and his crew put on life jackets and swam about 50 feet to the Gina Ann. Pasieka, who caught a mako shark but left it on the sinking boat, said, "That was the biggest fear, jumping in the water. We knew there was a shark in the water in eating distance."

While there are terrible acts of cruelty against animals, there are moments when humans band together to help them out. Newsday has a nice story about how firefighters in rescued a pet cat after his owners' Centerport house was on fire on Sunday. Apparently some oily rags in the kitchen garbage "ignited by 'spontaneous combustion'" (a fire official explained "certain kinds of oil can generate their own heat and cause fires"). While firefighters were able to put out the fire, during the inspection, some discovered a pet cat—named Sam— hiding in the basement. Newsday reports, "Centerport and Halesite firefighters used a small mask to give the cat oxygen. The cat was taken to New York Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center in Farmingdale, where he was said to be doing fine on Monday night." Aw—get better, Sam!

WCBS 2 thinks Governor Paterson has made a "dramatic promise to worried straphangers" today by saying, "I promise you we are not going to put that kind of fare increase on commuters, on people who come in and out of the city of New York to work and to live." "That kind of face increase" refers to the (average) 25% fare hike approved by the MTA last week, which could be prevented by a bailout from Albany. Unfortunately, the State Legislature doesn't agree—mostly the State Senate—so Paterson added in his remarks, "If I don't see it working then I'll just make [lawmakers] stay right there [in Albany] until we get a deal"—which is why the Daily News Photoshopped him into a subway train, we think. But he will give the lawmakers some time to "cool off" and won't make them stay in Albany during Passover and Easter vacation, so it's unclear how potent the threat is.

Earlier this morning, two workers on a window washing rig were dangling 71 stories above midtown streets. WNBC reports that the NYPD and FDNY "had to use glass cutters to remove a window and pull the workers through to safety." The incident occurred at the 78-story Metropolitan Tower, which is between 56th and 57th streets and 5th and 6th Avenues. The Department of Buildings has yet to comment. WNBC has a slideshow of the rescue and here's another dramatic picture at Curbed. Last week, a construction worker died in a scaffolding collapse in Morningside Heights.

More details have emerged on yesterday's arrest of Clark Rockefeller, whose wife divorced him after learning that his claimed membership in the Rockefeller dynasty was totally bogus. Rockefeller allegedly abducted his daughter last Sunday from a street in Boston; yesterday afternoon the FBI arrested him and took the daughter (pictured) into custody unharmed.

After a weeklong search, this afternoon the FBI found Clark Rockefeller and his kidnapped 7-year-old daughter, Reigh "Snooks" Boss in Baltimore. The NY Post did not have many details to offer up other than that Clark was taken into police custody and that Reigh is "safe and sound." In Boston, where the child was first abducted, officials said that they would hold a press conference later this evening.

The cable car system at the Bronx Zoo, better known as the Skyfari, gave passengers an unexpected adventure earlier this evening. Just before closing time, around 5:30 p.m., the system broke down leaving zoo patrons hanging above the wildlife below, but at least the bird's-eye-view was nice as they waited for firefighters to rescue them.

In two separate incidents, police and Coast Guard personnel pulled 19 individuals--including children--from the water after their boats swamped. Sixteen people were pulled from a 40-foot Sea Ray boat approximately a mile from shore and submerged so that its passengers were ankle-deep in the Long Island Sound Friday. Seven of the rescued were children. The boat began foundering when an exhaust hose broke, causing water to fill the boat. Separately, three Staten Islanders were rescued from the Hudson River near Peekskill when their sinking boat was in the path of a fuel barge.

Three young people--ranging between 16 and 20 years of age--were pulled to safety by FDNY rescuers off a jetty at Coney Island. Four firemen waded and swam out to the end of the jetty, where two women and one man were trapped by a rising tide.

The beaver that was rescued from the East River by an NYPD SCUBA crew Fiday near the United Nations has reportedly died. According to CityRoom, the 40 pound animal was on its way to Utica to be treated by a wildlife medical specialist, but expired along the way.

Police patrolling the East River near the United Nations as part of increased security linked to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the General Assembly diverted their attentions momentarily to rescue a beaver who seemed to be in distress. Cops noticed that the animal, which was four feet long and weighed 40 pounds, seemed to be laboring in the strong currents of the East River and was swimming awkwardly.

Early this morning, a car drove into the Newtown Creek. Police divers pulled two men from the water, one was alive and the other was dead.

A missing 7-year-old Queens boy arrived back in NYC this week after a successful enterprise that involved the NYPD, FBI, American Embassy, a charity to track kidnapped children, and a tip to his mother's MySpace account.

An 80-year-old woman was rescued Thursday by a former neighbor whose concerns were aroused when she spotted newspapers piling up outside the Woodside, Queens woman's front door. Kim Russo used to live next door to Rose Schwing and was stopping by her old neighborhood to visit her mother. When the 47-year-old Russo saw the papers and mail accumulating in front of Schwing's house, she peaked inside one of Schwing's windows and heard her cries for help.

Veeramuthu Kalimuthu, a Columbia University mechanic, managed to lift the man to the platform and then crossed the tracks again in order to catch a downtown train.

Some dogs traveling to the U.S. from Iraq weren't dogs of war or trained to sniff explosives. Instead, they provided a little comfort and unconditional love to soldiers stuck in a war zone. With the help of the International SPCA's Baghdad Pups program, two dogs named Liberty and K-Pot have been adopted by soldiers' families.

Georgia, the runaway subway cat rescued by a Con Ed meter reader and two determined MTA track workers, is resting up not just from her 25 days in the subway tunnels, but from surgery yesterday to repair a fractured leg. The doctors at Fifth Avenue Veterinary Specialists waited until yesterday to perform the surgery because Georgia was dehydrated at the time of her rescue and they wanted her stabilized before they performed the procedure.