Newark Mayor Cory Booker saves woman from fire
A New Jersey mayor has played down suggestions he is a hero after he rushed into a burning house to save a young woman.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker also won media attention when he helped clear snow from streets
Newark Mayor Cory Booker rescued the woman from the top floor of her house in the city's Upper Clinton Hill area.
A member of his staff tried to restrain Mr Booker from going into the house as it was engulfed in flames.
He later tweeted: "We got the woman out of the house. We are both off to hospital. I will b ok."
A follow-up tweet added: "Thanks everyone, my injuries were relatively minor. Thanks to Det Alex Rodriguez who helped get all of the people out of the house."
'Come to Jesus'
Mayor Booker appeared on CBS News on Friday morning with Mr Rodriguez, a member of his security team who saved three residents from the house.
Mayor Booker arrived back in his neighbourhood from a television interview and heard a young woman was still inside.
"At that point he started doing his job," Mr Booker said of Mr Rodriguez after part of the house exploded, "which was to grab me and try to drag me out of there. We had a little bit of a fight."
The mayor said he felt terrified as he ran through a burning kitchen with the young woman over his shoulder.
He briefly believed he would not make it out of the house: "It's a 'come to Jesus' moment," he said. "I really had this moment where I thought, okay, I'm trapped."
Mayor Booker said the experience gave him "profound respect" for firefighters.
"I'm ill-equipped now to do firefighter union negotiation," Mayor Booker joked.
The young woman suffered second-degree burns on her back. Mayor Booker burned his hand and suffered from smoke inhalation.
Three members of the mayor's security staff were also hospitalised after the fire, reported .
In December, Mr Booker won wide media attention after taking snow removal operations in the blizzard-hit New Jersey city into his own hands, chronicling his efforts on Twitter.
He personally responded to pleas for help and was dubbed a "superhero with a shovel" by some constituents.
Mr Booker is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party.
On his trip to the US in March, UK Prime Minister David Cameron met Mr Booker to hear about his efforts to turn around Newark after years of decline.
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