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 something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world’s greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“Yet, when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.”
—Lionel Pigot Johnson (1867–1902)
“Do they know they’re old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?”
—Elizabeth Jennings (b. 1926)
““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)