A veteran firefighter in New York died last month shortly after he suffered a medical emergency in a fire truck.
Fort Johnson Assistant Chief Steve ‘Bullwinkle’ Harris, 58, was donning gear with another firefighter as they prepared to respond to a structure fire on Feb. 12 when he experienced shortness of breath, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.
The two left the station in the engine with Harris as the passenger. When his condition deteriorated, the driver decided to stop at a nearby firehouse.
He was transported to St. Mary’s Hospital where he went into cardiac arrest. He was revived and flown to Albany Medical Center the following morning. He died later that day of multi system organ failure.
He had been a firefighter for 40 years.
To date, 15 firefighters across the nation have died on duty.
Two people were killed Monday afternoon in an Atlanta crash involving an ambulance, authorities said.
The wreck occurred in the 4000 block of Campbellton Road at about 1 p.m. when the medical vehicle and an SUV collided, police said. NewsChopper2 showed the SUV flipped on its side just off the road in the grass, and the ambulance had damage to its front bumper.
A person in the ambulance and the driver of the SUV were killed, police confirmed. The ambulance driver and a patient were injured, but their conditions were not released.
Atlanta police did not say what led to the crash or provide the names of those killed.
An FDNY EMT who earned $400,000 sitting at home for four years amid a feud with the department after joining a class-action lawsuit aimed at ending discrimination in the city’s firefighting ranks now hopes to retire, the Daily News has learned.
But before that happens, Emergency Medical Technician Arnaldo Rodriguez wants to be made a firefighter, which he was on his way to becoming in 2013 before an FDNY chief recently demoted by Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh ordered him to stay home and not return until contacted.
Rodriguez’s attorney is arguing he’s entitled to $1.5 million in backpay for wages he missed out on due to not being a firefighter over the last two decades.
Rodriguez, now 47, first applied to be an FDNY firefighter in 1999 but was denied. Still wanting a career as a first responder, he became an EMT the next year and spent more than a decade responding to emergency medical calls in Brooklyn, according to court papers.
While he was working as an EMT, Rodriguez became a plaintiff in the Vulcan Society lawsuit in which Black and minority firefighter candidates claim they were discriminated against because of their race.
Rodriguez wasn’t involved in the case when it first began in 2007 — but by claiming to have an interest in its outcome he was allowed later to join the case on the Vulcans’ side.
In 2013, after the city reached a settlement in the case, Rodriguez got a letter from the Justice Department saying he could re-apply to become a firefighter, court papers say. He was later admitted to the Fire Academy.
But after four days in the training program Rodriguez was brought into FDNY Chief Michael Gala’s office and told not to return to the academy.
Gala and the department accused him of lying on his medical records by failing to reveal an off-duty injury that left him on light duty for a brief time earlier in his career. He was also accused of putting false information in his application, the court papers say.
When Rodriguez asked where he would be sent next he was simply told, “We’ll call you — don’t call us,” his lawyer, Peter Gleason, told The News.
Gala said via his lawyer that in ordering Rodriguez to stay home, he was relaying instructions from officials in the department’s Bureau of Investigations and Trials.
“It was total humiliation,” Gleason said of his client’s treatment. “They were trying to break his will as a man.”
Gala opposed the Vulcans’ efforts to diversify the FDNY in letters published in The Chief-Leader, a newspaper aimed at the city’s civil service workers. He later settled a lawsuit against the city that claimed his career was stalled because of the letters. As part of the settlement, the city paid him $101,000 and promoted him to assistant chief of the department.
Gala is now fighting for his job after Kavanagh demoted him and two other assistant chiefs in February.
According to court documents, Rodriguez spent four years — from August 2013 to September 2017 — at his home in Woodside, Queens, waiting for the call to return to work. During all that time he was on administrative leave and received his full salary and benefits.
“It is unusual for anyone to be on administrative leave for four years,” a 2021 arbitration hearing over Rodriguez’s case noted.
For the first year of his exile Rodriguez was paid as a firefighter, Gleason said. For the last three, he was paid at a lower rate as an EMT.
“Adding benefits, the taxpayers paid in excess of $400,000 for an able-bodied man to sit at home,” Gleason said.
“But it was a double-edged sword,” the lawyer added. “In one respect being despised so much because of his status as a Vulcan litigant was distressing. But on the other hand not being in that atmosphere for four years was refreshing.”
When Rodriguez finally returned to work he was placed on a 60-day unpaid suspension. He was ultimately reinstated as an EMT and currently works for EMS’ Office of Medical Affairs and teaches new employees how to drive ambulances.
Because several EMTs have been punished by the department for speaking to the press about the challenges they faced during the COVID pandemic, Gleason declined The News’ request to talk to Rodriguez. As Gleason spoke to a reporter, Rodriguez sat by quietly.
Local 2507, the EMT union, filed a grievance on Rodriguez’s behalf saying his years-long leave violated its contract with the city and demanding Rodriguez be reinstated to the FDNY as a firefighter since he was in the fire academy when he was sent home. The union says he is thus owed back pay at the higher rate.
Entry-level EMTs are paid a base salary of $39,386, according to city records. Within five years, their pay increases to $59,534. City firefighters start their career with a salary of $43,904 that goes up to $85,292 after five years.
After hearing Rodriguez’s case, city arbitrator Lisa Charles determined in October 2021 that the FDNY wrongfully disciplined Rodriguez and ordered the department to “remove the discipline from his record, rescind the 60-day suspension, pay him for the missed time with interest and make him whole.”
Charles agreed with Rodriguez and Local 2507 that the mistakes Rodriguez wrote down on his fire academy medical forms in 2013 were not intentional and that during the years he was an EMT the Fire Department built up complete records about his health.
At a March 1 Manhattan Supreme Court hearing on Rodriguez’s position with the FDNY, Gleason said Rodriguez “emphatically wants to be restored as a firefighter.”
“When you make someone whole, you put them back in the position they should have been on the date of the incident,” Gleason said during the hearing. “So if that happened, standing here today Arnaldo Rodriguez would be a firefighter with 20 some-odd years.”
As a firefighter, his client should receive around $1.5 million in back pay, Gleason argued.
If the FDNY consents to make Rodriguez a firefighter and offers an agreeable back pay settlement his client would immediately retire, Gleason said. He wouldn’t be eligible to retire as an EMT until 2025.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Nicholas Moye denied the city’s motion to dismiss Gleason’s request to become a firefighter and kicked the case back to arbitration to determine Rodriguez’s future with the FDNY.
“I can’t give complete relief that he’s asking for but he’ll live to fight it out another day,” Moye said.
Both the FDNY and the city Law Department declined to comment as the case continues through arbitration.
Last month Kavanagh demoted Gala and two other FDNY staff chiefs to deputy chiefs for being “bad apples” and not following her mandates, FDNY officials said.
Gleason is hoping Kavanagh will use her power to make Rodriguez a firefighter, which Gleason believes the class action settlement mandates indicate should happen.
“Arnaldo has had enough of the turmoil emanating from the highest echelons of the FDNY where the commissioner’s office has done nothing to prevent or to resolve this situation,” Gleason said. “This would be a perfunctory decision. If Laura Kavanagh can’t follow a federal court mandate then it appears she has no respect for rules and regulations.”
March 20, 2023 “We’re sick of waiting, sick of being hazed, sick of being harassed…” Regina Wilson, president of the Vulcan Society said at a federal court hearing last week.
The head of the city’s Black firefighters group bashed the FDNY for not making significant progress in creating a “less hostile” atmosphere at firehouses — despite changes required by a groundbreaking civil rights lawsuit.
New York City firehouses remain hotbeds of racism and discrimination even after judicial orders and a settlement in the case reached in 2014, according to Regina Wilson, the president of the Vulcan Society, which represents Black firefighters.
“It’s been a number of years and our firefighters in the field are still out there trying to change the negative culture and traditions hoisted upon us,” said Wilson, the first woman president of the Vulcan Society. “We’re sick of waiting, sick of being hazed, sick of being harassed and sick of dealing with this.”
Wilson made the comments at the end of a status conference in Brooklyn Federal Court last week held to assess the city’s progress in implementing the lawsuit’s orders.
A massive staff reduction at the FDNY’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office has delayed misconduct complaints by Black members who feel they are being discriminated against by co-workers and superiors, Wilson said. As a result, the racially divisive atmosphere and attitudes at the firehouses haven’t changed, she says.
“The Fire Department can do something to make firehouses less hostile and have a more professional atmosphere,” she said. “Our members come into their firehouses with their fists balled because officers don’t know how to handle [the problem].”
In remarks at the beginning of the conference, FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh admitted “there is still work to be done.”
Kavanagh, the department’s first woman commissioner, did not challenge Wilson’s comments. “It would have been inappropriate for the commissioner to respond or interrupt her,” said an FDNY official who attended the conference.
Wilson said she was gratified that Kavanagh, who joined the Fire Department in 2014, has attended status conferences in the case since being a deputy commissioner. But Wilson said she “expected that we would at least have a plan to deal with some of these issues.”
The status conference was held as Kavanagh faces turmoil among the FDNY’s top brass who among other things bristled at her complaints that her chiefs need to stop bullying subordinates.
Speaking Saturday at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, Kavanagh said the Vulcan Society created the legacy of change she is pursuing.
“What motivates me every day is when someone comes into my office and says that they were bullied or harassed or not welcome in the firehouse,” Kavanagh said. “They’re the ones I work for. They’re the ones I take on this fight for.
“The New York City Fire Department is a phenomenal place and does extraordinary work but a great place can be better. This place will be welcome to everyone.”
“Some of the old entrenched folks [in the FDNY] feel they are owed their position rather than serve the city. They came after her,” Sharpton said. “We wanted her to know we are all for you shaking up how you do things.
“The way the deal was in the past, it can’t be allowed to continue,” Sharpton added. “Need to open it up and make it fair. All (Kavanagh’s) talking about is making it fair.”
The FDNY has struggled for decades to diversify its ranks.
Among those remedies was Garaufis’ appointment of a federal monitor to oversee new FDNY recruitment, hiring and retention policies aimed at increasing the number of Blacks and other minorities in the department.
Last November, just a month after appointing Kavanagh fire commissioner, Mayor Adams signed a series of bills that would require the FDNY to implement a plan to hire more women and nonwhite firefighters, upgrade firehouses to accommodate women’s privacy and submit an annual report focused on the demographic composition of firehouses around the city.
City attorneys said more people of color have joined the FDNY thanks to changes in recruitment campaigns and orientations that help candidates prepare for the grueling physical requirements needed to become a city firefighter.
But people of color are still under-represented in the department.
As of October, the FDNY had 881 Black firefighters, making up about 10% of the department — out of proportion with the city’s population, which according to the Census Bureau is about 23% Black. There were 1,417 Hispanic firefighters, making up roughly 17% of the city’s firefighting force. About 30% of the city’s population is Hispanic.
Nearly 70% of FDNY firefighters are white, city officials said. The city’s population is about 40% white.
The Vulcan Society and Black community advocates say a long-delayed “climate survey” which would zero in on the department’s current racial issues has stalled progress.
Garaufis, who oversaw last week’s status conference, said firehouse attitudes will change as more people of color join the FDNY.
“It’s a question of having a sufficient number of people of color so when the firehouse garage door comes down and firefighters are in the house they must by virtue of necessity behave in an appropriate manner,” Garaufis said.
“The court can’t make people unbiased. If nothing else works, what will work is numbers and the understanding that everybody is a professional.”
Mar. 20—Houston police early Monday were searching for a Chevrolet Avalanche suspected of crashing into an ambulance and then speeding off in north Houston, officials said.
Two firefighters were in an ambulance that was heading south on Airline Road around 3 a.m. when a dark-colored SUV struck it near the intersection of Parker Road, Sgt. David Rose, of the Houston Police Department, told On Scene reporters.
Both firefighters were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, Rose said. No patients were in the ambulance at the time of the crash.
Investigators were searching for the dark-colored SUV that fled the area with heavy front-end damage, Rose said.
An unlicensed teen behind the wheel of an SUV involved in a fiery crashed that killed him and four other family members had been warned not to drive.
The sole survivor of the horrific crash early Sunday on the Hutchinson River Parkway, a nine-year-old boy was riding in the hatch of the Nissan Rogue, according to CBS2.
The vehicle veered off the road, struck a tree and caught fire.
In addition to Malik Smith, the 16-year-old driver, other victims were Anthony Billips Jr, 17; Andrew Billips, 8; Zahnyiah Cross, 12 and Shawnell Cross, 11.
Smith’s father told a reporter that he and others in the family knew he had been driving.
“…I told him, his mother told him, his older brothers told him, stop driving without a license, without a permit. Anything happens, you get pulled over, you get in trouble for these things. Stop doing this,” Malik Smith said.
The passengers in the vehicle were his son’s cousins.
“They wasn’t (sic) cousins, they were more brothers. Brothers and sisters, that’s how close they are,” Smith said, adding that the group enjoyed going to the mall together to hang out, get ice cream and go to movies.
