After leading his company into the building to begin fighting the flames, Nappi "became overheated and collapsed," the FDNY said in a statement. Taken to the street by fellow firefighters, he was at first conscious and alert, but went into cardiac arrest after being placed in an ambulance. He died at Woodhull Hospital.

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Advocates have long said the requirement was an unnecessary barrier, and in his annual State of the State speech, the governor agreed. "For all of our progress, there are still basic wrongs to right. There is never an excuse for letting any child in New York go
to bed hungry," he told a crowd of legislators, mayors and other dignitaries. "We must increase participation in the food stamp program, remove barriers to participation, and eliminate the stigma associated with this program. And we must stop fingerprinting for food."

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By moving their stash from pocket to plain view, the users committed a crime, and could be arrested. It's unclear how often the approach was employed, but it came amid a huge spike in arrests in New York City for the lowest-level offenses involving marijuana. And regardless of how frequently police used it, the ploy contradicted the spirit of a 1970s New York State law that decriminalized the possession of small amount of marijuana.

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Even far outside of the Zone A areas, there were signs of the impending danger, though they were subtle. At Lehman College, one of the city's evacuation centers, miles from any of the evacuation zones, a police officer said at 1 p.m. that only two families had shown up to stay. Empty school buses stood out front. A few blocks away and a short time later at Dewitt Clinton High School, staff said that 18 people were there--one family of 13 among them. The sign-in table there included a sheet of rules that barred "alcohol, drugs and weapons." IS 201 in Hunts Point has capacity of 2,000, but only had one family registered as of 2:30 p.m. Nearby, an outdoor religious service boomed through a PA in Spanish and English.

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The night before they had seen Mayor Michael Bloomberg on TV announcing the mandatory evacuation of their neighborhood before the arrival of Hurricane Irene. “We knew we better leave,” said Plummer, a cabdriver who walks with a cane. His wife’s mother would take them into her Flatbush home. Many of his neighbors, however, were staying put. “They think the mayor’s just trying to make up for missing the snowstorm last winter.”

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But Carey's death this weekend, as a major ratings agency downgraded U.S. debt after the summer's embarrassing debt-ceiling debate, was a reminder that the argument over who should bear the cost of government is as present in 2011 as it was in the darkest days of New York's fiscal crisis, when Carey—elected in 1974 after several terms as a congressman—steered New York through its near-bankruptcy.

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