situations. brynn gingras with five of new york s bravest who went beyond the call of duty. every out of the building. this is the type of job you see once in a 20-year career. reporter: as a manhattan apartment building ig fighted in flames, more than 200 members of the fdny raced toward it. these five men among them. the roof was on fire, there was fire coming out of the shaft. there was fire all around us. reporter: firefighters never met before but that day an 81-year-old man trapped in his home brought them together. frank called me and told me that we had a guy at the window. my thought possibly was the fire escape to get to him but as you saw in the photos there was no fire escape in this old law tenement. grabbed the rope, dumped the rope on the roof, that s when andy and steve came up and joe and we went to work. reporter: a rope rescue is a dangerous technique which hasn t been attempted by this department in five years because