A firefighter who survived a fatal Bronx house fire in 2005 testified Tuesday about his narrow escape in the trial of three people charged in connection with the deaths of two city firefighters. NY1's Lily Jamali filed the following report.

Retired Firefighter Jeff Cool walks with a slight limp -- evidence of the injuries he suffered on january 23, 2005. That morning, his rescue company was called to a fire at 234 East 178th Street.

Cool told jurors he was carrying a thermal imaging camera that detects heat through walls and at first everything seemed under control. But Cool said shortly after he arrived on the fourth floor, his camera picked up heat behind a wall in apartment 4L. He poked a hole in it and confirmed the source of the fire.

Cool says he told a fellow firefighter, "Brother, you guys need to back up. He looks at me, he says we're trapped."

He also said the fire lapped at his legs, recalling, "You could see it burning through on us. It was starting to get like hell in there. It was hell."

But unlike most of his brothers, Cool had a personal safety rope, a means of escape. He bought it after the FDNY pulled the ropes from service saying they were too bulky. As he and a fellow firefighter prepared it, Cool looked to the next window.

"Guys are going one after another out that window. The brothers, they were out one after another," said Cool.

Cool used the rope to lower himself as far as he could, then he fell.

"I was in the worst pain I ever thought I could find myself in. I was in a bad spot but there were guys worse than me," recalled Cool.

Cool and three others were badly hurt.

Lieutenant Curtis Meyran and firefighter John Bellew were killed.

Their widows wept in the courtroom during Cool's testimony.

"Hearing from people who were with him his last minutes, knowing what he's gone through with his injuries and how he was thinking of his wife and his children, I know Curt was thinking of the same thing," said Jeanette Meyran.

Two tenants are accused of putting up illegal partitions that prosecutors say trapped the men, and the others for failing to enforce the rules.

Defense attorneys tried to refocus the blame from those partitions to problems getting water inside and the lack of ropes.

"If these people had these ropes, no matter what the defendants did or didn't do, they'd still be alive and we wouldn't be here," said Defense Attorney David Goldstein.

Defense attorneys got Jeff Cool to admit he was critical when the fire department took those personal safety ropes away from firefighters. They were reissued after the fire.

Jeff Cool's testimony is scheduled to continue Wednesday.