It’s been a rough stretch for the ranks of the FDNY
The coffin of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo is brought into St. Nicholas of Tolentine Roman Catholic Church in the Bronx last March. Arroyo was killed when a carjacker ran her down with her own ambulance while she was on duty, police said. Credit: John Roca
The year 2018 has been a tough one so far for the FDNY.
Firefighter Michael R. Davidson of Floral Park on Thursday became the third member of the department’s current ranks to die this year. His death comes on the heels of the loss of Master Sgt. Christopher Raguso and Capt. Christopher T. Zanetis earlier this month in a helicopter crash in Iraq where they were serving with the U.S. military.
Taking into account the past 12 months, the FDNY saw the death in Queens of firefighter William Tolley, 42, of Bethpage last April when he was assessing a roof during a fire. Also killed in the line of duty was EMT Yadira Arroyo, 44, a mother of five, after she was run over last March when her ambulance was carjacked.
As with the NYPD, the FDNY also has witnessed continuing deaths of personnel from illnesses attributed to their work after the Sept. 11 attacks. A total of 343 firefighters died that day and since then, counting deaths from illnesses, that total has hit at least 502. In September, 32 more names of those who died from illnesses attributed to September 11 were added to the FDNY memorial wall.
“We have been through a rough few months,” said a spokesman for the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
Davidson’s death is the fourth of a firefighter since 2014. The latest FDNY death attributed to September 11 was that of retired firefighter Keith R. Young, who died of brain cancer at 53. He spent time in the recovery effort at Ground Zero after the attacks.
Gary Ludwig, a fire chief in Champaign, Illinois, and a national expert on firefighting, said that the FDNY will likely do an intensive review of what happened at the scene when Davidson was fatally injured. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health will also conduct its own investigation, as it does in all firefighter deaths, said Ludwig.
While the FDNY training is superb, said Ludwig, for a department with so many fire response runs it is like “roulette” for firefighters each time they go out.
So far this year nationally there have been 17 line-of-duty firefighter deaths, reported the U.S. Fire Administration, a federal agency under the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Figures for 2017 weren’t available but in 2016 there were 67 deaths, as well as 22 from heart attacks and strokes attributed to fire calls, the USFA said.
Statistics compiled by the National Fire Protection Association, an industry group, for 2016 show that about 42 percent of firefighter deaths — of both regular and volunteer members — involved stress and overexertion that led to heart attacks or strokes. Only 9 percent of the deaths were attributed to asphyxiation, the association’s data showed. The cause of the fire that took Davidson’s life is under investigation.
In New York City this year, on top of the line-of-duty deaths have been civilian casualties. The most notable was the death of 13 people earlier this year in an apartment fire in the Bronx that started when a child played with a flame on a stove, investigators said. That was the largest number of fire deaths since the Happy Land Social Club fire killed 87 in the Bronx in 1990.
Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.
