Chief Michael Fahy. FDNY photo.
By Ray O’Hanlon
New York City has last one of its bravest.
FDNY Battalion Chief, Michael Fahy, died Tuesday after being struck by debris when a drug lab in a Bronx house exploded.
As many as twenty were injured in the blast, according to reports.
Chief Fahy, a 44-year-old father of three (two boys and a girl) was a 17-year department veteran.
Like so many of the FDNY Irish before him, Fahy had joined the fire department in the footsteps of his father, Thomas, also a Battalion Chief.
The explosion occurred at about 7 a.m. in the Kingsbridge section.
It came about an hour after a passerby called 911 to report an odor of gas around the home at W. 234th St. and Irwin Avenue, the Daily News reported.
“We had a tragedy today. A tragedy has befallen a family, a fire department and our entire city,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio said in announcing the death.
“We – Commissioner Nigro, Commissioner O’Neill and I, spent time with his wife and with his parents here at the hospital and saw the unspeakable pain when they were told formally they had lost Michael. It is a reminder of the dangers that our first responders face every day, the dangers that the men and women of the FDNY face and the bravery with which they do their job.”
The rental property, an attached brick residence, was under investigation as a marijuana grow house, said Police Commissioner James O’Neill.
The lone resident inside the house exited the home when firefighters arrived.
It was unclear if the pot production contributed to the explosion, and an investigation by the NYPD arson and explosion squad was underway, the Daily News report said.
Nine firefighters, six police officers, three Con Edison workers and two civilians were injured by the blast that hurled chunks of the roof into the street.
The death of Chief Fahy, described by FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro as “one of our rising stars,” was the FDNY’s first line of duty loss in more than two years.
Chief Fahy, a native of Rockland County, was assigned to Bronx Battalion 19. He lived with his wife Fiona and their three children in Yonkers.
Fahy was a qualified lawyer, a graduate of New York Law School.
He had also attended Naval Postgraduate School in 2011-12 where he had earned an MA in Homeland Security.
This entailed completing a rigorous 16 month Homeland Security and Defense program at the Postgraduate School sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
