FDNY Lieutenant Dies in Brooklyn Fire

An FDNY 9/11 hero died battling a three-alarm blaze that ripped through a Brooklyn warehouse Monday, the first city firefighter to perish in the line of duty since 2009.

Lt. Richard Nappi, 47, of Engine 237, was leading his crew’s efforts inside the box-crammed Bushwick building when he became overheated, suffered exhaustion, collapsed and then went into cardiac arrest, officials said.

“He was a great kid. He was so wonderful, always happy, always good,” Nappi’s heartbroken mother, Regina Hickey, 73, told the Daily News when reached at her North Carolina home.

“I really got lucky to be his mother,” she said, sobbing.

Hickey said her son always wanted to be a firefighter, even volunteering on Long Island when he was 18.

“He was the kind of kid who would be the first one in,” she said.

On a summer-hot spring day, Nappi, a 17-year FDNY veteran, was directing firefighters manning a hose line on the second floor of the Flushing Ave. warehouse when he complained of dizziness and collapsed, Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said.

Nappi was pulled from the inferno by members of Ladder Co. 112 and went into cardiac arrest as he was being taken to Woodhull Hospital, where he died.

“He was an extraordinary firefighter and an extraordinary officer. He was a leader that people followed,” Cassano said.

The commissioner and Mayor Bloomberg consoled Nappi’s widow, Mary Anne, as she grieved next to her husband’s lifeless body and agonized over how to break the news to their two children — Catherine, 12, and Nicholas, 11.

“Outside of his family, his life’s work was keeping New Yorkers safe from fires, and by any measure he succeeded magnificently,” said Bloomberg, speaking at a press conference at the hospital.

The mayor said he told Nappi’s widow that “now her responsibility is to take care of the kids.”

The deadly blaze, which left five other firefighters with nonlife-threatening injuries, broke out at 1 p.m. on the second floor of the two-story warehouse at 930 Flushing Ave. A pile of cardboard ignited in a space leased by an import company, officials said.

Building super Bernard Joseph told The News that about 30,000 square feet of the building — all packed with boxed appliances — was consumed by flames. “It was hard for the firemen to move around because it’s so crammed. The boxes went up 20 feet,” Joseph said. “They had to cut holes in the roof to get to it. All you could see was smoke.’”

Grief for brave lieutenant

As word spread through the ranks that Nappi didn’t pull through, fellow firefighters were left reeling by the passing of a lieutenant who showed his valor time and again.

Those who knew him remembered his actions on 9/11, when he rushed from his Suffolk County home on his day off and joined his fellow Bravest in the effort to evacuate the World Trade Center.

Bloomberg said Nappi also moonlighted as a deputy chief instructor at the Suffolk County Fire Academy, teaching a new generation of firefighters the tricks of the trade.

Those close to Nappi in the Fire Department said he was a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and had a heart of gold. In 2007, he shaved his head to show support for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for children with cancer.

“He was a comedian and a warm-hearted person,” said a fellow Brooklyn firefighter who last worked with Nappi a year ago.

Prior to joining the FDNY, Nappi was a parole officer for the New York State Division of Parole, and also worked for several years as a caseworker for Suffolk’s Department of Social Services. He was a graduate of Iona College, where he received a B.A. in criminal justice in 1984.

About 8 p.m. Monday, his anguished wife was escorted into her Farmingville, L.I., home, her arms held by two emergency service workers on either side. Neighbors hugged her and offered condolences.

Several minutes later, her two children were seen sobbing as they were escorted to their house from a neighbor’s home across the street.

“It’s tragic,” said one neighbor. “He was a great guy.”

The five other firefighters injured in Monday’s blaze were treated at Kings County Hospital, and all were eventually released, officials said.

It took more than 120 firefighters about three hours to extinguish the fire in the old warehouse.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management also leases storage space in the building, officials said, but the fire was not in its section.

The last firefighter to die in the line of duty was Paul Warhola, 47, who suffered a stroke while responding to a fire alarm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in August 2009.

The last firefighter to die battling a blaze was Lt. Robert Ryan, killed in November 2008 while fighting a Staten Island house fire.

“It’s a very tragic day for New York City,” the mayor said. “Somebody who devoted his life to keeping us safe is no longer with us.”