ABOVE: Firefighters hang bunting at Lt. Gordon Ambelas's fire station in Brooklyn
NYC Firefighter Eric Bischoff talks about the fallen FDNY hero at a news gathering in NYC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6zvD-pTsOQ#t=116
Funeral
arrangements for Lt Gordon M Ambelas, Bn-28 detailed to TL-119, are as
follows: Wake- Casey McCallum Rice Funeral Home 30 Nelson Ave Staten
Island Tuesday & Wednesday 2-4pm & 7-9pm. Funeral- Thursday
1100am at St Clare's Church 110 Nelson Avenue Staten Island, NY
Our prayers and condolences to the family and friends of Lt. Ambelas-- and of course to his fellow firefighters -- people like him who have saved other's lives live on in our hearts and are never forgotten....as noted by the parents of the young boy whose rescue Lt. Ambelas oversaw recently.
Our prayers and condolences to the family and friends of Lt. Ambelas-- and of course to his fellow firefighters -- people like him who have saved other's lives live on in our hearts and are never forgotten....as noted by the parents of the young boy whose rescue Lt. Ambelas oversaw recently.
UPDATED STORY FROM NY TIMES:
After
the call came in — a fire licking the curtains in a 19th-floor bedroom
window, smoke pouring into the night — the fire ladder truck from nearby
Hooper Street was the first to arrive on Saturday at the Brooklyn
high-rise. Out jumped Lt. Gordon Matthew Ambelas, a 14-year veteran,
leading a team of four firefighters into 75 Wilson Street in
Williamsburg. It seemed a routine fire, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet
minutes after Lieutenant Ambelas, 40, headed into apartment 19B with
two other firefighters to look for people who might be trapped, he was
carried out unconscious, badly burned and on the verge of death.
A
man who had made a career of rescuing people — from the World Trade
Center after the Sept. 11 attacks, to the floods of Hurricane Sandy, and
most recently from the clutches of a metal gate that had trapped a
child — could not be saved.
As
family and friends mourned the lieutenant on Sunday, the events on the
19th floor of the building in the Independence Towers remained murky.
Investigators sought to determine how a blaze that did not at first
appear unusual ended in the first death of a city firefighter in the
line of duty in more than two years. A preliminary investigation found
that it was started by an air-conditioner power cord that was “pinched”
between the bed and a wall on its way to a power outlet, said Jim Long, a
Fire Department spokesman.
Complicating
the search, the one-bedroom apartment was crammed with the possessions
of its owner, Angel Pagan, so much so, neighbors said, that they
sometimes had trouble entering his apartment. In firefighter parlance,
it was “Collyers’ Mansion conditions,” named for the hoarding Collyers
brothers’ Harlem brownstone. It meant searching the apartment was much
more dangerous and difficult than usual.
At
the lieutenant’s firehouse on Hooper Street, in the Hasidic Jewish
section of Williamsburg, not far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
one thing was clear: Lieutenant Ambelas, “Matt” to his friends, had died
as he had lived, on the front lines.
“Last
night we had a tragic fire, and Matt, true to who he is, led these men
from the front, with bravery,” said Eric Bischoff, 41, who served
alongside Lieutenant Ambelas for 13 years at the Staten Island firehouse
where they both started their careers. “He was unwavering in his
efforts to find and save lives. He died a hero. That’s how he lived. And
we will never forget him.”
He
spoke moments after a crew of department officers draped ceremonial
purple-and-black bunting above the firehouse’s red bays, as is tradition
for fallen firefighters. It will remain hanging for 30 days.
As
the pleated fans billowed in a light breeze, some eyes in the crowd
welled up with tears. A group of Hasidic men from a congregation across
the street watched in respectful silence. The rabbi, Leib Glanz, said
they mourned Lieutenant Ambelas because he led an operation last month
to rescue a 7-year-old Hasidic boy who was trapped in a roll-down gate.
The episode showed “that F.D.N.Y. members are always ready to help others,” Lieutenant Ambelas said during a ceremony honoring the firefighters on June 26. “It was great teamwork all around.”
In
a statement on Sunday, relatives of the boy, Mendy Gotlieb, said they
hoped the lieutenant’s family “finds solace in the so many lives that
are living on because of him,” calling him “the savior of our child.”
Another
bunting ceremony took place a few hours later at Lieutenant Ambelas’s
old firehouse on Staten Island, where he began as a rookie with Ladder
Company 81 in 2000 and served until September, when he was promoted to
lieutenant and given a temporary assignment to Hooper Street.
MANHATTAN
East
River
QUEENS
DETAIL
BROOKLYN
Site of fire
75 Wilson St.
Williamsburg
Woodhull
Medical Center
Firehouse
26 Hooper St.
Brooklyn Navy
Yard
Bedford-Stuyvesant
2,000 Feet
But
Staten Island, where he was raised and lived with his wife, Nanette,
and two daughters, Gabriella, 8, and Giavanna, 5, remained his home.
They
lived in a tidy brown-shingled home on a tree-lined street where
American flags fluttered from almost every porch. Early Sunday
afternoon, a man emerged to lower the Ambelases’ flag to half-staff.
When
Yvonne Rogers, who lives on the block, was going through a divorce,
Lieutenant Ambelas started showing up at her house to mow her lawn. She,
in turn, sometimes babysat for his daughters. “We were family,” Ms.
Rogers said, crying. “Matt is the best human being in the world. He was
like a brother. I’m so hurt. May he be at peace.”
He
was never without Gabby and Gia, as the girls were called. “He was
fantastic with his two daughters,” said Mike Nolan, 58, another
neighbor.
Through
welling tears, Mr. Bischoff recalled the high jinks the two had gotten
up to in their younger days: the time, for instance, when he entered
Lieutenant Ambelas in a cooking contest, which the lieutenant did not
know entailed making food for 800 people. He competed anyway — and came
in second place. “Secret recipe,” Mr. Bischoff joked.
“He
was beloved by everyone in the firehouse and truly everyone he came in
contact with,” Mr. Bischoff said. “What a nice, fine man. Never had a
harsh word for anyone.”
On
his way to battle the fire that would kill him, residents of the Wilson
Street high-rise recalled, Lieutenant Ambelas was friendly, reassuring
terrified neighbors.
“He came up, he was smiling the whole time. A nice smile,” Andrew Vamvakaris said. “He said, ‘Hello, fellows.’ ”
The
19th floor remained so smoky on Sunday afternoon that it brought tears
to the eyes. Its hallway was flooded with puddles of black water, its
ceiling stained with soot. Residents described calling 911 and growing
increasingly fearful as they heard Mr. Pagan’s three white Yorkshire
terriers, by all accounts the pride and joy of his life, barking and saw
smoke seeping out of his apartment.
Mr.
Pagan, 51, a well-liked hairstylist and baker who packed his apartment
with knickknacks and figurines, had been at a McDonald’s when the fire
started around 9:10 p.m., and came running when he heard, he said. He
said he had been forced to rely on extension cords because many of the
power outlets had stopped working in his apartment.
Asked
about the clutter in his apartment, he conceded there were lots of
baking supplies around, but said, “You could walk around perfectly.”
About
100 firefighters eventually responded to the fire. Mr. Pagan’s dogs,
which he used to ferry around in a baby carriage, did not survive. “I’m
very sad,” he said in Spanish. “I’m out in the streets.” To Lieutenant
Ambelas’s family, he said: “I am so sorry. He was so young.”
Carlos
Torres, a 61-year-old neighbor, said he had seen the lieutenant brought
out on a stretcher. Someone was pumping his chest. He had been badly
burned by flames and heat.
“They
come running,” said another neighbor, Sigfredo Vega, marveling at the
firefighters’ courage. Any normal person would flee from a fire, he
said, “but they come in front.”
Reporting was contributed by Annie Correal, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, J. David Goodman and Nate Schweber.
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