How fatal flames change firefighters
BY DENNIS SMITH
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 2:43 AM
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JAMES KEIVOM/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSWords fail
As the city mourns the unspeakable loss of seven children to a fire in their Brooklyn home, I hope we also pause to think about the public servants who tried to rescue the boys and girls.
“It’s difficult to find one child in a room during a search,” said Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro as the city came to terms with the blaze’s human wreckage. “To find a household of seven children that can’t be revived . . .”
And there his words trailed off.
Nigro is probably the most experienced firefighter anywhere. He has held every rank and every important position in the most active fire department in the world.
No one is better prepared to speak about this tragedy, and every firefighter understands why he did not finish his sentence.
Firefighters cannot and never would compare their grief to that of this or any family. Our thoughts, like those of all New Yorkers, are with Gayle Sassoon, in critical condition at the Jacobi Medical Center burn unit; with her husband; with the children they have lost, and with their surviving daughter.
FACEBOOKSeven of the eight children of the Sassoon family died in the Brooklyn fire.
Still, our pain is real, and we must absorb it and move on to the next job.
We are tormented by “what if.” I’ve been in many fires where I asked what might have happened if only someone had called 911 a minute or two earlier, if a socket connection had been stronger or newer, if a smoke detector had a new battery.
But that only begins to describe what rushing to the rescue, only to sometimes miss the opportunity to save lives, does to the spirit.
Some firefighters seek trauma intervention. Some let their experiences sink deep into their psyches. You might think they might drink or manifest some erratic family behavior, and in some cases you would be right.
For most, though, being witness to so many terrible things makes them progressively more steady and patient as they go through the years on the job.
JAMES KEIVOM/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSAfter the blaze
I cannot remember the last time I was angry. I know how piddling most day-to-day, anger-causing events can be — especially in comparison to what is seen between the flames or after the smoke lifts.
I think of Billy O’Meara, a man I worked with in the South Bronx. He was like all the firefighters I knew in our firehouse on Intervale Ave.
It was an early-morning fire. Two of the three bedrooms were on fire, and the flames were blowing out of the windows and reaching skyward. Billy and the men of Ladder 31 forced the door, and the heat forced them to their knees.
I watched them then disappear into the smoke as we waited for the water to be pumped up to the fifth floor. After a minute or so, just as the water arrived and we began moving the hose through the apartment, Billy again appeared, this time with a child dangling lifelessly in one arm.
Ten minutes later, I went down to the street to check on a small injury I had received, and I saw Billy sitting on the vestibule steps. The child was lying across his lap. It was a little girl, maybe 2 years old. I wondered what kind of a chance at life she might have had were it not for this fire.
TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSMembers of the Sassoon family killed in the fire were laid to rest in a cemetery in Israel.
Then I looked closely at Billy, at his eyes. I saw they were wet and almost fully closed. The corneas were red from the heat and the smoke, and light reflected from the watered surfaces. They seemed to glitter.
I remember wishing that everyone who ever asked me why I fought fires in what was then the busiest fire company in New York could see the humanity, the sympathy and the sadness in his eyes.
In his eyes at that moment, I could see what Dan Nigro and all the firefighters who lifted those seven children from the ashes the other night in Brooklyn must have been feeling.
Smith, who served for 18 years as a New York City firefighter, is author of “Report from Ground Zero” and other books.
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