A Borough Park firehouse has been crippled by COVID-19 — with 11 firefighters testing positive and a dozen others suffering symptoms — as it responds to emergencies in a Hasidic community that largely ignores social-distancing rules, The Post has learned.
Most of the coronavirus victims at Engine Co. 282/Ladder Co. 148 believe they caught the deadly bug while responding to crowded “places of worship, schools and mikvahs,” or ritual baths, in the ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn enclave, an FDNY employee said.
The confirmed virus-stricken firefighters include Kinga Mielnik, 41, a mother of five who was released from Bellevue Hospital Wednesday after a 10-day fight for her life.
“Kinga was in the hospital with pneumonia but she’s home now,” the firefighter’s mother, Elzbieta Mielnik, told The Post Saturday. “She was on a ventilator and a lot of medicine. Thank God she’s home now.”
Mielnik’s sister Daiana, 37, a fellow FDNY firefighter at Engine Co. 276 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, has tested positive but is recovering at home, the mom said. “She was a little weak, had a small fever for two days, and now she’s okay.”
The trail-blazing, highly-respected Kinga Mielnik joined the FDNY in 2003 as one of 24 women at the time. Her sister started in 2005.
The sisters — the second pairing ever to serve the FDNY — modeled for the June page of the 2017 FDNY Calendar of Heroes, the first featuring women. The dynamic duo playfully posed at the car-fire simulator at the Fire Academy on Randalls Island.
Another stationhouse member, Lt. Michael Roskowinski, tested positive for COVID-19, his father Michael Roskowinski told The Post.
“He didn’t go to the hospital. He had high fevers. He feels fine now,” he said.
The sick list also includes Omar Sattar, 33, a Muslim firefighter who contracted the coronavirus last month, nine days after three Hasidic teenagers allegedly sneezed in his face as a taunt.
The FDNY did not report the apparent hate crime to police, a law-enforcement source told The Post.
Despite the multiple members on medical leave, the rank and file have been muzzled and intimidated by the brass, the source said.
A boss has vowed to fire anyone who talks about the Sattar incident, and threatened to “punch in the f–king mouth” anyone who questions their safety.
When firefighters call attention to Hasidic community members disobeying the quarantine, they are told to “shut up and do your job,” the source said.
The FDNY did not return a message seeking comment.