Because, when danger loomed high above the streets of New York City last October, Michael Alacha and Timothy D. Lynch, very much like superheroes, vaulted upward under adverse conditions and thwarted the menace. because, as Hurricane Sandy lashed the city with 80-mile-per-hour winds, the pair quickly assessed the damage to a snapped construction-crane boom atop One57—at 90 stories, projected to be the city’s tallest residential building (where the duplex penthouse is tagged at a vertiginous $90 million). because engineers Alacha and Lynch, emergency and forensic specialists for the city’s Department of Buildings, raced to the scene, took an elevator to the 20th floor, and hoofed it the remaining 53 flights. because once they arrived, hundreds of feet above West 57th Street, they braved life-threatening gales as storm winds tore through the open construction site. because the men understood the risks, estimating there was a very real chance the 26,000-pound boom, thrown over the back of its mast and dangling by frayed cables, would plummet—directly onto a gas main below, with unthinkable consequences. because they took part in evacuating and cordoning off the immediate area, and, over the next few days, working with colleagues such as Frank Damiani and Faisal Muhammed, assisted in devising a plan for workers to manually rotate the boom so that it lay flush with the building, permitting it to be secured with steel cables and eventually cut up and removed. because Alacha, 54, whose home in the Rockaways was flooded throughout the ordeal, and Lynch, 50, a dedicated runner who dashed up the stairs twice, came to the rescue and helped save the city—or at least some of its prime real estate, including Carnegie Hall.