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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Blog Contributors
Jarrett Murphy
City Limits
Helen Zelon
Johann Hamilton
Neil deMause
Heart Attacks Are Biggest Threat to Firefighters
Forty-seven-year-old Lt. Richard Nappi of Engine 237, a 17-year veteran of the FDNY, was felled by an apparent heart attack Monday after battling a warehouse blaze in Bushwick.
Related topic categories: Activism and Volunteerism, Health and Environment, FDNY, Firefighter Fatalities
Following the Story: Nationwide, Firefighter Deaths Drop
This summer City Limits reported on the causes of New York City firefighter fatalities over the past 20 years. A lot of the factors in those local tragedies mirrored threats faced by firefighters everywhere—communication problems, firefighters getting lost, problems with air supply.
The federal government just reported that despite those risks, American firefighters suffered fewer fatalities last year than in the previous 18 years: 81 on-duty firefighters perished in 2011, down from 87 the year before, and the fewest since 1993. To put those numbers in some context, in 1978, 171 U.S. firefighters died on duty. Back in 1945, in New York City alone, 28 firefighters perished.
Related topic categories: Government, FDNY, Firefighter Fatalities
Watch a Wind-Driven Fire
A line-of-duty firefighter death is never a simple case of cause and effect. In the dozens of fatality investigations that City Limits reviewed for the September/October issue of our magazine, it was never possible to isolate a single factor that solely and completely explained a death. An illegal conversion, for example, may have trapped firefighters in an apartment on East 178th Street in the Bronx in January 2005, but problems with the hose line, confused communications and a lack of escape ropes helped turn a very dangerous situation into a deadly one for two firefighters. And the fire was fueled by a steady wind.
Read More»
Related topic categories: Health and Environment, Government, FDNY, Firefighter Fatalities
