Think F.A.S.T.: Firefighter Advanced Survival Techniques

Think F.A.S.T.: Firefighter Advanced Survival Techniques

Mayday! Mayday! Firefighter down in the rear! We got six firefighters ... Mayday! Mayday in the rear! We need EMS in the rear. We got a whole company in the rear; they had to jump. One, two, three, four, five, six who jumped in the rear! We need massive EMS here! Massive injuries!

This is a radio transmission none of us on the job ever wants to hear-one of our own calling a Mayday. Even worse, conditions are deteriorating so badly that the only alternative for survival is jumping from a window. On the morning of January 23, 2005, six Fire Department of New York (FDNY) firefighters jumped out of four fourth-story windows of a tenement at 236 East 178th Street in the Bronx, New York, and fell 50 feet to the pavement. Two of them died from their injuries. Another four barely survived, sustaining massive injuries that kept them in the hospital for months and effectively ended their careers. Another firefighter died at an unrelated fire in Brooklyn, New York, that same afternoon, making that day the first since 1918 that firefighters had died in two separate incidents in New York City. The day on which these dual tragedies occurred has come to be known as “Black Sunday.”