Capt. Ben Barstow loves being a city firefighter, a job that provides opportunities for “an adrenaline rush, coupled with helping people.”

On Tuesday, at a City Council meeting, Barstow and 12 of his colleagues received medals for their work last Easter, when one such opportunity occurred and they saved a woman from certain death.

The fire was in a second-floor apartment, the living room was ablaze when they arrived, a man was hanging onto a window ledge — and was soon to let go — and they had credible information a woman was trapped in a bedroom.

There were three sets of windows, with fire filling the room behind the window on the left, and a slope making a quick ladder placement impossible for the window on the right, Barstow said.

So Barstow and engineer Keith Cron placed a ladder against the middle window and entered, as Capt. Mike Hawksworth sent water into the building from outside.

It was a bedroom, and smoke was thick and black, so there was no visibility, Barstow said, holding his hand in front of his face to emphasize that he couldn’t have seen it then.

Barstow took the lead and began crawling — feeling his way along a wall toward the back of the apartment until he reached a door, which he opened, allowing him to turn right down a hallway. There he could feel “heavy heat,” he said. “Better make this quick,” he thought. The hallway led to the bedroom where they’d been told the woman would be.

Entering, Barstow touched a bed and reached up.

His hand landed on a person’s face.

He could feel the facial structure, even with his heavy gloves, and he could feel hair, he said, sitting Tuesday evening on a bench in front of Fire Station No. 1, across from City Council Chambers.

He felt relieved, he said.

But the woman was unconscious.

Barstow and Cron — and by then, Capt. Christopher Dalby — carried the woman to the window of the bedroom, past a dresser and other obstacles.

At that point, there was no going back the way they’d come, Barstow said.

It’s hard to carry an unconscious person, because the body is not only dead weight, but “like spaghetti” — with no muscular control, according to Barstow.

By then, other firefighters had moved the ladder from the middle window to the one on the right and had placed a second ladder next to the first one. One firefighter held that second ladder up while another wedged a tool under its right leg, to keep it from tilting.

The firefighters in the building handed the woman headfirst out the window, and engineer Eric Kowalski bore her weight as they took her to the ground.

About seven minutes had elapsed since firefighters had arrived.

Both the woman and the man who had let go from the second floor sill have recovered, according to the firefighters.

Barstow became a firefighter on the example of his father, Ed, who was also a firefighter in Altoona.

“You have to have a calling to want to do this job,” Ben said.

He experienced firefighting first as a member of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, during a “training evolution” on a plane.

“I knew (then) that’s what I wanted,” he said. “I got a taste, and I was hooked.”

The core of the work is “doing a good deed that’s dangerous,” he said. “Making a dangerous problem go away.”

But you can’t do it by yourself, he said. It’s a group effort.

He may have located the woman, but Cron and Dalby helped carry her out, other firefighters were knocking down the fire as they worked, still others were setting the ladder under the window of the bedroom where they’d found the woman and ensuring it remained upright, and Kowalski was bearing the victim’s weight on the way down, he said.

Working together and succeeding is like a sports team’s victory, he said.

Barstow said he wasn’t scared that day because of his training and being on the job long enough.

“It wasn’t the first time,” he said. “And I knew I had good guys there.”

Still, the firefighters who entered the building were in “extreme danger,” according to Interim Fire Chief Adam Free, who read the medal citations at the meeting.

Barstow, Cron, Dalby and Kowalski received medals of valor.

Hawksworth, Capt. Bryson Peterman, Capt. Terry Alwine, firefighter Shane Geis, engineer Ben Parrish, engineer Patrick Miller, engineer Brad Rupert, engineer Brandon Nicodemus and Capt. Trent Miller received Life Saving Medals.

Recently retired Fire Chief Tim Hileman authorized the awards, Free said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.