Rescuer called composed, 'very cool'
CAMBRIDGE -- He had the knowledge, determination, and a ladder, so John Culhane became the leader of a band of desperate people yesterday, frantically searching for fresh air as choking black smoke billowed around them.
"He was very composed, very calm, very cool, very methodical," Jay Petkunas said of Culhane, a 41-year-old electrician who was working on the sixth floor of One Broadway yesterday when an electrical transformer exploded.
Culhane, along with dozens more, tried to get out by using the building's two emergency stairwells, but could not fight through the smoke.
He said he grabbed a ladder and smashed out a window in the rear of the building, but quickly realized it was not a safe escape route because it was two stories to the ground below.
Then, he said, he spotted what he described as catwalk that linked the high-rise and an adjacent parking garage. He ran into Petkunas and Petkunas's business partner, Tim Weller, who work for a consulting firm on the 11th floor and who had stopped on the sixth floor because of smoke. With their help, Culhane used the ladder as a battering ram to punch out a second window.
He then lowered the 8-foot ladder out the broken window and started helping people onto the ladder and down to the catwalk below. Petkunas and Weller helped by guiding people to the window.
To reach the garage roof, people then had to climb up about 5 feet. An office chair was used until another ladder was found on the garage roof and put to use.
Culhane and Petkunas estimated that 40 people used the makeshift escape route. Culhane was the last out.
"John waited for everyone to get out and make sure that I was out safely," Petkunas said.
Petkunas used his cellphone to direct Cambridge firefighters to the garage roof, while Culhane signaled to a second group of people trapped on the seventh floor that they could smash their windows without harming anyone below.
Firefighters escorted people on the seventh floor over to the parking garage roof, the men said.
Culhane, a married father of two who lives in Littleton, downplayed his actions. "I broke a window and helped people out," he said.
But Petkunas gave Culhane much more credit.
"John was the guy that was really doing it," said Petkunas. "He was the one, the catalyst, for everyone getting out."
John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com. 