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Few members of local communities, across the country, and the city, are as readily and visibly identified with the word “hero” as firefighters. Long before the September 11th attacks, and the tragic loss of life that claimed 343 members of the FDNY, the men and women who daily protect our communities have been recognized for their valor and sacrifice. Within New York City, the presence of Latino firefighters has grown, if slowly. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit legal organization that has joined a federal lawsuit aimed at having the FDNY diversify its ranks, New York City has the least diverse fire department of any major city in America.
In Los Angeles, 14 percent of its 3,500-strong firefighter’s force is black, and about 30 percent is Hispanic. In Philadelphia, 26 percent is black and 3 percent is Hispanic within the ranks of its 2,400 firefighters.
In New York City, the 14,000-member department is only about 3 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic.
This is the story of some of los bomberos within those ranks.
“Every kid wants to be a firefighter”
“What was that?”
Joaquín Castro is distracted as he speaks on his years of service as a New York City firefighter. But he’s got cause.
His 20-month-old daughter, Gianna, happily wreaks minor havoc on a nearby posterboard with markers, careening about the room mischievously.
Castro, 32, a Washington Heights native, father of two young girls Gianna and Alanna, has a decade of experience saving lives and property, having served first for two years in Emergency Medical Services (EMS) department, and then as a firefighter for the past 8 years at the Engine 93 Ladder 45 Battalion 13 firehouse on West 181st Street, between Amsterdam and Audubon Avenues. “The simple things,” he says quietly when asked about growing up in the Heights. “I liked just hanging out with family and friends, going to Highbridge Pool.”
Castro is one of a close-knit group of Latino firefighters in houses in northern Manhattan that have formed an unofficial brotherhood within the department. It is marked by an easy camaraderie, by jocular wisecracks issued in a rapid-fire combination of Spanish and English, and above all, by an abiding respect – for each other, and for the communities in which they serve.
Joaquín Castro, a Washington Heights native, has served as a firefighter for the past 8 years at the Engine 93 firehouse on West 181st Street, between Amsterdam and Audubon Avenues. “It’s a good feeling [to serve]. People in the neighborhood are so proud, always, when they see me, in the stores, or on the streets.”
“It’s love,” explains Bernardo Rodriguez, a voluble and engaging Washington Heights native (“born and raised”) who’s been nicknamed by fellow firefighters as “Bernie Brugal”. “We have love for each other, and for the work.” Rodriguez serves at the Ladder 36 firehouse on Dyckman and Vermilyea Avenues, along with a number of other local Latino firefighters, including his compadre José Cruz.
Cruz, who has been on the job since 2003, was born in Bonao, in the Dominican Republic. His family came to Washington Heights when Cruz was 3 years old, and settled on West 178th Street, where he attended P.S. 187 and George Washington High School.
In fact, all three of the young men attended local schools within a year or two of each other, but didn’t meet until they had joined the department. And their experience with the local firehouses, and the men and women within them, also vary.
Castro recalls three separate fires in his own apartment building growing up.
“You could feel the heat,” he recalls. “We all had to evacuate the building, and when you walked past, you could feel it.” He was struck too by the devastation of loss for his neighbors, whose apartments were destroyed from electrical fires. The firemen who responded to the calls made a strong impression.
“They were definitely saving lives and property. I respected that,” says Castro.
For Cruz, who had moved on to become a city bus driver and was raising his family, there was no such direct experience as a child with local firefighters. But he had committed to civil service, had taken the test and had become a city bus driver.
Ironically, it was his time just after 9/11 spent driving firefighters and emergency service personnel down to and from Ground Zero that affirmed in him the desire to be a firefighter.
“It was the brotherhood, how they looked out for each other; it was very real,” he explains haltingly, of those long drives to “The Pile” where firefighters searched for colleagues, and back. 9/11, even ten years in, serves as a difficult subject, even for those who joined the department after the attacks.
“I knew, everyone knew, of the dangers, of the job, more than ever,” says Cruz, acknowledging the concerns his friends and family raised. “But if I was called up, I knew I was going to do it. I knew it.”
And he was called, serving in the Academy in 2002, and joining up the year after.
“It’s hard, yes, but it’s just as much about common sense, and having a good head on your shoulders,” says Cruz about his training and working experience. “This is serious.”
Rodriguez, ever watchful, nods. He is possessed with a disarming sense of humor that strikes without warning, but is also thoughtful and pensive.
Growing up near the single engine firehouse on 170th Street was something of a double-edged sword for Rodriguez.
“We’d play curb ball in front of the house,” he says of how he and his friends would take advantage of the wide open sidewalk space in front of the firehouse. They would, depending on who was on duty at the time, either be allowed in for a 50-cent soda or be chased off the premises.
Rodriguez was a character, by his own admission, even then. He would joke with the men of the house, and was singled out by one, a gentleman by the name of Lee Fuchs.
“You’re tall,” said Fuchs to the young Dominican-American. “You should be a firefighter.”
But Rodriguez didn’t take the recommendation seriously, and went on to be, as he describes it, “a jack of all trades”. He studied at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, was a doorman at residential buildings downtown, did maintenance work at Columbia University, and headed a vocational program at Alianza Dominicana, the local non-profit organization.
“I grew up in Alianza. When I wanted to find a better job, and get my education in order, I went to Alianza. They did everything they could to help me, and more,” he says proudly, pointing specifically to mentors like Moisés Pérez and Eddie Silverio. “And I did everything to help them.”
Castro serves as part of an informal brotherhood within the department that consists of other Latino firefighters who serve throughout northern Manhattan, including Sasha Gomez (shown here in center) and others such as Bernardo Rodríguez and José Cruz.
Not yet 29 years old, he was single father to his little girl Amanda. He had kept in touch with Norma Smith, a neighborhood matron. “She did well by me,” he explains. “It’s easy to get jammed up in the Heights, but she was another voice that always told me that I could do a lot with myself.”
Ms. Smith had heard that the FDNY was actively looking to recruit new cadets from underrepresented populations, and she insisted that he sign up for the test. He did, and waited nearly 5 years before he heard back.
“You have to be patient, it’s true,” Rodriguez acknowledges.
“It’s not easy. Y cada cual tiene su pelea [everyone has their own fight],” he adds. “Tu tiene que poner de tu parte [You have to do your part].”
It’s a nod to the fact that there are skirmishes on the job, tensions that arise from being members of the house who more apt to play salsa or merengue on the radio, or that you might break into Spanish in and out of the house. You pick your fights, they say, and learn when to shrug it off as nothing more than a joke, and when to step up for a different kind of conversation.
But these young men, fathers and strivers, disciplined and mindful, are as quick to acknowledge that the honor in service and respect for each other, for all FDNY servicemen and women in the department, is real.
“People are people, punto [period]. I do this work because I love it. Yo he celebrado aquí, y yo he llorado aquí [I have celebrated here, and I have cried here, in the Heights],” adds Rodriguez. “It means something for me to talk to the kids here, tell them there’s more to do. It means something for me to be the one to talk to them about las pompas [the hydrants].”
Castro agrees. “People in the neighborhood are so proud, always, when they see me, in the stores, or on the streets. They stop me, and they ask, “Are you really a firefighter?”
They are, each one an unambiguously proud member of the FDNY.
“Everybody wants to grow up to be a firefighter,” smiles Cruz. “It’s a good thing to do.”
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