FDNY- New Second in Command, Bob Turner

Veteran FDNY firefighter set to be second in command after 36 years

Joe Kemp Yesterday, 02:30 AM

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

 

Bob Turner, a 36-year vet, says as first deputy commissioner he’ll help make FDNY 'representative of the city we serve.'

 

The FDNY’S new first deputy commissioner is a veteran firefighter who has responded to nearly every type of emergency — including three that claimed lives of New York’s Bravest.

Bob Turner, 57, has worked nearly every job in the department during his storied 36-year career, and is now preparing for his new role as Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro’s second in command. “I think with my experience, I bring a lot to the table,” Turner told the Daily News on Tuesday.

That’s exactly why Nigro tapped him for the post. “I have known Bob Turner since he was a young lieutenant in Manhattan more than 20 years ago,” the commish said in a statement. “He’s an outstanding firefighter and a strong leader, and I know he is exactly the person our department needs to improve and move forward.”

Turner, the son of an FDNY captain, the late Robert Turner, said that along with working to preserve the department’s history of heroism, he’s aiming to become “intimately involved” in helping to diversify the ranks. He said that he and Nigro share a vision “to make certain that this job becomes representative of the city we serve,” referring to the recently settled civil rights lawsuit over biased recruitment methods.

Turner, who most recently served as director of the department’s First Line Supervisor Training Program, said strengthening the department’s resources was important to building the next generation of heroes. He said he knows firsthand how firefighters’ lives depend on cooperation in the field.
Turner arrived at the World Trade Center soon after the towers collapsed on 9/11. Months earlier, he was one of the first responders to arrive at what became known as the Father’s Day fire — a Queens explosion that killed three firefighters. And in 1998, Turner responded to a fire that killed two firefighters on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.

“It really hits you,” he said of working a fire that claims a firefighter’s life. “You take it personally.”
But some emergencies were even more personal. Just two hours into the new year in 1984, Turner got a call from his sister that she was trapped by fire in her Flushing, Queens, apartment — just around the corner from his home.

Turner sprinted barefoot to the building and ran up the stairs to his sister’s flat, where he found her standing near the fire escape. He managed to get her out of the building, but suffered second-degree burns trying to save a 370-pound woman, who didn’t survive.

In 1997, while working for Engine Co. 214 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn — where his father, Robert Turner, had once been assigned as captain — he responded to a 911 call made from a Hancock St. home.

“I quickly noticed I was responding to my father’s address for an emergency,” Turner said.
His father, a popular community activist in the neighborhood, had collapsed from a seizure and later died from a heart attack at the hospital.

And now years later, Turner said he’s most grateful to have risen through the ranks just like his father.
“My father right now is very proud of me,” he said. “I’m sure he’s looking down on me and smiling.”
jkemp@nydailynews.com