FDNY Line of Duty Death
July 4, 1924 - LODD
Probationary Fireman James J. McCormack, 24
Engine 40
FDNY. Manhattan, New York
On arrival, firemen found a working fire in a vacant two-story brick building. The members of Engine 40 stretched a line into the first floor and were attacking the fire when the roof and side walls suddenly collapsed, burying more than a dozen men. Fellow firemen went to work with their bare hands digging out their comrades and getting them to the hospital. Fireman McCormack was found and rushed to a waiting ambulance, but died while enroute to the hospital. He had just graduated from the academy two days earlier and was eagerly awaiting his first alarm. Tragically, it proved to be his first and last. A dozen others were injured in the collapse, two seriously.
Fireman James J. McCormack of Engine 40 lost his life when a shed in a vacant lumberyard collapsed. The fire, at West 58th Street and Eleventh Avenue, also injured Lieutenant George F. McGinty of Engine 40, who later became a famous FDNY Drillmaster. The company was the first to arrive at the fire and was working in the shed under a heavily timbered roof. One line of hose was in operation fighting the blaze when, without warning, the roof and sidewall collapsed. Most of the roof came down on McCormack while a heavy timber beam fell on McGinty's left leg and pinned him to the ground. It took a dozen men to lift the roof off McCormack so he could be dragged out. He was placed in an ambulance and died on the way to Bellevue Hospital. He was twenty-four years old and lived at 228 East 120th Street. McCormack's assignment to Engine 40 was his first from Training School. (From "The Last Alarm" by Boucher, Urbanowicz & Melahn, M.T. Publishing, 2006)
RIP. Never forget.