What Daniel Nigro Has Seen in a Half-Century of Firefighting
The New York Times
The retiring Fire Department commissioner discusses how the department, and even the fires it fights, have changed over the decades.
Across Daniel A. Nigro’s 73 years, there’s been one constant: the New York City Fire Department. He followed his father into the ranks in 1969, and in the 53 years since, Mr. Nigro held almost every job there is to hold in the department, from “probie” at a Manhattan engine house to fire commissioner.
On Wednesday, he will retire after eight years as the department’s leader.
Mr. Nigro has seen it all, or most of it — from the crime-ridden ’70s to the “War Years” of the ’80s, when fires were common in New York, to the city’s resurgence in the 2000s. Last month, he was at the scene of a fire that killed 17 people in the Bronx — one of the deadliest in the city in decades.
