Firefighters

May 31, 2022 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the end of the cleanup at the World Trade Center site. Ground Zero burned for more than eight months after 9/11, as more than 100,000 union responders conducted search-and-rescue and recovery operations, starting New York City on the difficult and heroic path to recovery. These responders’  […]

February 27 marks the 47th anniversary of the New York Telephone exchange fire. Just after midnight on February 27, 1975, a short circuit in the basement cable vault at the New York Telephone Company switching center started a fire. At the time, fifteen employees were working in the building, located at Second Avenue and Thirteenth […]

Firefighters risk their lives daily to help save others from danger. They bravely run into harm’s way while others flee in the opposite direction. This selfless act defines their profession. Another part of the profession — that often isn’t so obvious — is their risk of developing mesothelioma. Almost all buildings — both residential and […]

Dennis Smith, a longtime New York City firefighter and bestselling author, passed away on January 21. He was 81. Raised on the East Side of Manhattan, Smith joined the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) in 1963, when he was assigned to Engine Company 292 in Queens. In 1966, Smith was transferred to the busiest […]

Firefighters who worked at the World Trade Center (WTC) site on or after 9/11 have a 13 percent higher risk of cancer, especially prostate and thyroid cancer, according to a recent study. The study, published in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, also found the WTC firefighters were diagnosed nearly four years earlier than other firefighters […]

Almost three-fourths of the FDNY personnel who worked at Ground Zero on and after 9/11 have developed a long-term illness related to their exposure to airborne toxic chemicals at the World Trade Center site, according to a recent study.  Of the 15,200 FDNY firefighters, paramedics, and other workers who were there, at least 11,300 have […]