The New York City Fire Department, formally the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) has the responsibility of protecting the citizens and property of New York City's five boroughs from fires and fire hazards, providing emergency medical services, technical rescue as well as providing first response to biological, chemical and radioactive hazards. The department has its headquarters in 9 MetroTech Center, Downtown Brooklyn, and its training academy (The FDNY Fire Academy) on Randall's Island.
The FDNY, the largest municipal fire department in the United States, and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department, has approximately 11,080 uniformed officers and firefighters and over 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics. It faces an extraordinarily varied challenge. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, there are the many bridges and tunnels, large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to major brush fires, and one of the largest subway systems in the world. These challenges add yet another level of firefighting complexity and have led to the creation of the motto for FDNY firefighters of New York’s Bravest.
Read more about New York City Fire Department: Organization, Ideology and Core Competencies, Bureau of Communications, Bureau of EMS, Apparatus, Union Representation, FDNY in Literature, FDNY in Film and Television, Ranks of The FDNY
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“New York is what Paris was in the twenties ... the center of the art world. And we want to be in the center. It’s the greatest place on earth.... I’ve got a lot of friends here and I even brought my own cash.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
““Which is more important to you, your field or your children?” the department head asked. She replied, “That’s like asking me if I could walk better if you amputated my right leg or my left leg.””
—Anonymous Parent. As quoted in Women and the Work Family Dilemma, by Deborah J. Swiss and Judith P. Walker, ch. 2 (1993)