Chief Leader – June 16, 2015
by SARAH DORSEY
Although Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro’s father, for whom he is named, was a Captain in the FDNY, he had no expectations that the younger Nigro would follow in his footsteps.
“He encouraged me to keep that option open,” the Commissioner, now 66, recalled last week. But though he admired his father’s service, he wasn’t sure it was for him while growing up in Bayside, Queens. It came down to an observation, best summed up by his decades-long friend Fire Chief Peter Ganci, whom Mr. Nigro succeeded as Chief of Department when Mr. Ganci perished on Sept. 11. The Chief used to say that the guy he knew who seemed the happiest with his job was a firefighter.
That clearly became the case for Mr. Nigro, who is now one of six people in the history of the FDNY to have held every uniformed rank, from Firefighter to five-star Chief. Started During ‘War Years’
Mr. Nigro came on the job in 1969 at a time when, amid the flames and smoke, it was common for firefighters to set aside their masks and supplemental air during a fire. This was true when he first joined Engine Co. 21 in Midtown, and continued to be a part of firefighter culture during the time he spent as a Lieutenant at Engine Co. 35 in East Harlem. That was during the FDNY’s war years, the period in the 1970s when the poorest areas of the city—including Harlem—seemed to be perpetually on fire.
Mr. Nigro served in several other firehouses, battalions and divisions in four boroughs, including Division 14 in Queens, Engine 8 in Manhattan, Battalion 19 in The Bronx and Battalion 28 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. As Deputy Assistant Chief in 1996, he oversaw the merging of the Emergency Medical Service into the FDNY and he instituted the Certified First Responder program, which for the first time taught firefighters to deliver medical care. Since firehouses are more numerous than EMS stations, fire trucks typically arrive minutes before an ambulance arrives; that extra time has likely meant survival for thousands of patients.
But despite his years of experience at each level of the department hierarchy, the Commissioner credited another factor as giving him an advantage as a leader: the time he spent away, after his retirement in September 2002 and before he was appointed Commissioner by Mayor de Blasio in May 2014.
Mr. Nigro was forced to retire in 2002 after being denied tenure as Chief of Department, a title he assumed on Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, he and Chief Ganci, who then held the rank, rushed to the World Trade Center from FDNY headquarters in downtown Brooklyn, arriving after the first plane hit. Both watched the second plane hit the South Tower; both were present when the towers came down. Only Mr. Nigro survived.
Since that day, when the department lost 343 people, the FDNY has retained its reputation for fighting fires in a particularly tough manner, approaching from the interior of buildings. In his travels since 2002, in Europe and around the country, the Commissioner said he had the opportunity to visit many fire departments and compare their approaches.
‘None As Aggressive As Us’
“I haven’t seen anyone who’s as aggressive in the interior attack of firefighting as we are,” he said. “We’ve set the standard for that; we’re proud of that.”
He referred to the rescue of a Brooklyn mom and her 12-year-old twin daughters last month from a second-floor Borough Park apartment.
“Our members went in from two different ladders and up the stairs and got them out, and if I say in the nick of time—the first report I got was that these people were ‘likely,’” Mr. Nigro said—meaning likely to perish. Thanks to their quick rescue, they eventually recovered despite heavy smoke inhalation.
But Sept. 11 did prompt some concessions toward keeping members safe. “We will not unnecessarily, say, put 100 people in harm’s way when perhaps 20 would suffice,” he said.
The Commissioner, who will be releasing his Strategic Plan for the department in a few days, said that he shares with the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters the goal of bringing more people of color into the firefighting force; the last three Academy classes have been between 37 and 45 percent minority. Though that force is still just 6 percent black, he pointed to those recent additions and said he believed the changes were happening about as fast as they could within civil-service parameters.
The Commissioner also recently announced plans to hire the FDNY’s first Women’s Outreach Coordinator, who he hopes will help attract more female athletes and military veterans—the subset of citizens most likely to enjoy physical work and be prepared for it. For a department that’s now just one-half of 1 percent female, there is much room to grow in that area.
Opening Doors to Community
But Mr. Nigro said one of his biggest goals is to open up firehouses to the public more, starting with a series of block parties throughout the summer designed to dispel the criticism that once firehouse doors go up, its members remain apart from the community.
The Commissioner—who served as the first Chief of EMS in 1996—also said he believes it’s critical to remind fire and EMS personnel that they’re all one united force. He has begun a series of mass-casualty drills so that firefighters and medical responders can practice working together at the scene of a crisis.
He has met with U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno, whose members will be working with FDNY officials on training techniques. He believes they will bring new resources to a department that continues to change with each generation.
“I’d say it’s a better department [today], and that’s not to denigrate the people that went before us,” he said. “I’ve always said each generation makes the department better.”
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