Daniel Nigro takes FDNY helm as commissioner 12 years after resigning from department
The incoming New York City Fire Commissioner, who’s the son of an FDNY captain, is widely credited with keeping the FDNY moving forward after 343 firefighters died in the World Trade Center terrorist attack.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, May 9, 2014, 1:56 PM
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Massimo Sambucetti/AP Daniel Nigro will lead New York's Bravest as the new Fire Commissioner. Daniel Nigro III, the son of an FDNY captain, followed his father into the ranks of New York’s Bravest back in 1969 and stayed through the department’s darkest days after Sept. 11, 2001.
The 65-year-old Nigro is widely credited with keeping the FDNY moving forward after 343 firefighters died in the World Trade Center terrorist attack.
He became Chief of Department after 9/11, sworn in six days later to replace his old friend and golfing buddy Peter Ganci atop the devastated department.
Nigro and Ganci drove together across the Brooklyn Bridge to the burning towers on that bright morning; only Nigro came home.
“The lowest point of my life,” Nigro once said of 9/11. “I’d lost so many friends. It was hard to go on.”
The firefighter’s son was raised in Bayside, Queens, and never wavered on his plan to join the FDNY. He joined the department in the year of the Miracle Mets after graduating from Baruch College.
Nigro, the father of two adult daughters, is a longtime resident of Whitestone, Queens.
Through his decades in the department, he became known for his sharp wardrobe, laid-back style and dry wit. Nigro is an avid golfer and history buff, comfortable with either a sand wedge or a Civil War biography in his hands.
Nigro became a deputy chief in 1993, and was installed in 1996 as the head of the Emergency Medical Service when it fell under the FDNY’s umbrella.
Three years later, he was bumped to department Chief of Operations — a promotion that came on the same day when Ganci became Chief of Department.
Nigro retired as chief of department just prior to the first anniversary of 9/11 amid widespread changes in the FDNY brass. He opted to step down rather than take another position.
In September 2002, he was named to an FDNY anti-terrorism task force with former CIA chief James Woolsey and Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Joshua Lederberg.
lmcshane@nydailynews.com
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