By Tara Byrnes Cummings
Why did you join the Fire Department?
I was in the Navy like both of my brothers – I finished my time in the Navy went on to fire department in 1968, as both my brothers were already in the Fire Department, so I followed. I retired in 1989. I got out after 21 years, I was a fire marshal for my last 3 years when I finished my career.
My older brother Jim was in the Navy first. He went on to the fire department about 1960. Jim spent his whole career at 65 Engine in Manhattan on 43rd St. and we both retired in 1989, my brother Jim was on for 29 years. My other brother Tom stayed on for 40 and retired as a Battalion Chief out of the Bronx.
Where did you serve as a firefighter during your career?
I worked in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan as a firefighter and I retired as a fire marshal in Manhattan.
And the history of Fire Marshals goes way back – and I bring this up because as a fire marshal this guy named John Mulligan, a great guy, very nice man, he was a newspaper reporter and he got on the job as the press aide with the FDNY. So, he came to our quarters one day for something and he was just talking about how there should be a book that should be written about the fire marshals, the origin of them. It’s not really a typical rank in the fire department, it’s more law enforcement really. The origins go way back to the civil war. Well, during the Civil War, the Confederacy had this plan to burn down New York City, arson wise. As a result of that or partially as a result of that according to John Mulligan. Anyway, marshals were created and they were allowed to take oaths and affirmations from people about fires. If you lie after you give an oath or affirmation, you’ve committed perjury, you get locked up. No other law enforcement people, maybe the feds can do that. That was all because of this thing back during the civil war – they were worried about the confederates burning down New York City. Secretary of State Seward sent a note to New York City’s mayor saying they want to burn down the city. The marshal job was needed, or fire investigations in general.
If you want to become a fire marshal coming from the firehouse its really, it’s interesting from the standpoint of you have this freedom, and you go around investigating fires, you know a lot of it is kind of B.S. Like rubbish in a hallway is a suspicious fire. So, you’d have the 3:00 o’clock in the morning call, get down to the rubbish in the hallway fire and you have to go investigate it. It’s like, a lot of that but, very interesting you know.
Now, these people who commit arson, a lot of them these people are very, very sick people. I met a couple of them.
The one interesting story that I had when I was a fire marshal, we would respond to all hands fires just automatically. They didn’t have to be declared suspicious, we would just pull up to an all hands fire, but the deal was, the fire was basically just a normal fire, they put out the fire and pulling down ceilings and stuff. When we got there my partner and I pull up about a block away from the fire, park on the site and we drive in civilian car. Looks like we are detectives, we go up and we get out of the car and this guy comes over to us immediately. He was a street person, he goes, my name is, Ricky, Ricky Rickiardi, I still remember the guy’s name and we know he recognized us as Marshal’s.
It was an abandoned building and he was living in that building, and he is telling us that they’re going to say that he started that fire. Long story short is, there was a DOA in the building. So, they were these street kids who were like sort of runaways, they were living in the building. Ricky was in that same building, and being the lunatic that he was. The kids, the runaways, they didn’t want to have him in their group. So, he started the fire and ended up killing one of the kids. So now we know it’s an arson fire and find this DOA and try to get this guy to give up, the fire, admitting to it – my supervisor had actually locked this guy up. I don’t know, but eight years before we got him to admit to a fire and he ended up doing 4 years in jail as a result of it. But, he never admitted to this fire. I mean it was so difficult even
talking to him. He was on parole. We’re trying to talk to his parole officer. You know this guy is living in an abandoned building.
And so I retired with the fact that this guy was free. We knew he started the fire and killed somebody. And you know he’s still running around the streets of New York City.
I’m retired about six months now, I’m reading a newspaper one day , this guy Ricky was visiting a friend in Wyckoff Hospital and he got into a dispute with the guy who was in the bed next to his friend. This guy Ricky went out, got a can of lighter fluid, came back sprayed it on the guy in the bed next to his friend, killing him. I say, you know, if we had been able to get this guy, we would have saved a life you know, theoretically. But you know it’s just one of those crazy crazy things.
We started doing some investigation on him. He was responsible for a number of major fires when he was a kid. He lived over by Brooklyn Queens border. This guy Ricky got into a dispute with a store owner that accused him of shoplifting. Came back and set a fire that turned out to be his second fire.
So, he’s in jail now, I think he’s hopefully dead. Yeah, who knows, he was probably 10 years older than me then, but a complete lunatic. I mean was he was crazy. That is one thing about an arsonist. Other than arson for profit, they are all really crazy people. Yeah, no, really I mean they’re the sick.
I remember when I was in 134 truck, in Far Rockaway, we had a fire in the co-ops. They had a fire in one of those co-ops down there, Mitchell Lama building apartments. They were all fireproof buildings so the fire was contained to the one apartment. And what happened was, is that it was two guys, a couple, they had had a fight. One guy stabbed the other guy in the neck with a carving fork, tied him to a beach chair on the terrace, then set fire to the apartment. Then one of our firefighters, who was out on the roof knocking down the fire, was able to see this guy tied up in a chair. This guy was still alive. He survived. The fork must have missed any major artery. The firefighter was talking to a guy, saying “TELL US THE GUY, tell us his name before you die. “So, you can imagine this poor guy tied to a chair, his apartment was just burned to a crisp, he’s got a carving forks sticking out of his neck and here was the firefighters saying give us his name before you die. But it was a lot of that, a lot of crazy crazy bizarre stuff, that’s why you could see why they use law enforcement and hospitals stuff as these TV shows, because of stories like these happen every day.
Fire marshals have a different view of the fire department. When you were a firefighter, you’d go to the fire. You put the fire out, and your pretty much done. You go back to the firehouse especially as a firefighter, as a boss they got reports and things like that, but as firefighters, there’s no reports, nothing. You do it, and you go back to the firehouse and start another job. You know whereas, when you were a marshal it was more like being a cop.
You see the after effects, it was it was pretty pathetic really. You know you go to these, these scenes that when you were a firefighter, you know you would see horrible places, whatever, then you go back to quarters.
Another time, we went to an apartment on what was called New York Ave, and now it’s Guy Brewer Blvd, in Queens by JFK. The whole thing was we were going down there to investigate, it was, it was horrible. Young woman, she had five kids and we were investigating because one of her kids had burned his brother. He had basically taken his brother, I’m talking about a toddler and tied him to a radiator burned him horribly. We had tried to get her help, because this kid who was only like 8 years old, was obviously disturbed. It was a horrible situation there for this woman and her kids, no help, can’t get away from it, almost makes you a liberal. It’s a vicious cycle.
Any interesting or funny stories you would like to share?
They pulled this on me, the 500-pound lift. So the discussion is, sure I could lift 500 pounds dead weight , you know and there was a lot of strong guys. So, they take out to the roof rope,and they drop it down the pole hole from the second floor. Now you are the first guy, they’re going to tie you up because they want to get all this weight. The guy who’s upstairs is going to show that he can lift that weight, which is all BS. So, what they did is they tie the rope on me. Now, there is a whole bunch of guys upstairs and that rope is tied on me. They pull me up, halfway up the pole, and tie me off. Now you’re dangling from the ceiling and they are down there with the water and everything, yeah. Fun…
Yeah, that kind of stuff is not allowed now.
I’ll tell you a funny story that I heard about. Oh, it’s just as bad. I worked with a guy in 25 Truck, who had been in 31 Truck when they were at the height of eighty-five hundred runs a year. I think it was the Daily News Magazine section. They were coming down to 31 Truck to do like a photo shot of what life is like in the busiest firehouse in the world. What they did was, on the day that the photographers came down, they had a rec room in the basement, ping pong table, and a pool table. So, what the guys did was they had the photographers waiting upstairs. They had two guys playing ping pong, a couple of guys playing pool, but only one thing is, they were all naked. No pictures were taken.
September 11, 2001
So, I run into a guy in a bar, after 911. I was at happy hour and the guy overheard me talking about the fire department. It turned out this guy was an FBI agent and he knew the guy who was the Security Chief of WTC. He was supposed to meet him that morning, and that guy got killed. The only reason he didn’t get killed, you know maybe they would have been out in the building, but he was late for the meeting. You know its fate, you know, the crazy stuff that happened that day. A lot of stories.
Final Statement
My grandfather was a Battalion Chief back in the day, who died in 1926, Chief Frank Owens. I actually found his original personnel folder. When I went down to headquarters looking for it. It wasn’t even a manila folder, it was just a Manila sheet. So, the guy was looking through the archives, and he sees Owens and as he took it out, the bottom of the sheet the particulars fell apart. It only had name on the top part which stuck out, with no name on the bottom. So, if the top part is gone you would never know who it was for. Yeah. So when he took it out, the thing just fell apart because it was exposed to the air. He went on the job in 1899, The New York City Fire Department only started in 1898, with the five boroughs. He was one of the first firefighters, in Brooklyn. It listed his former occupation as blacksmith and driver.