By William Murphy
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
There were 87 line-of-duty deaths among the nation’s firefighters last year, down from 103 the prior year and the third fewest annual deaths in almost three decades, according to a new report.
Three of those deaths were in New York City on the same day: on Jan. 23, when two firefighters were killed in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn.
“The sharp drop in the total number of on-duty deaths that occurred in 2005, a 16 percent decrease from 2004, is encouraging,” the report by the National Fire Protection Association said.
“But it is premature to cite one year’s experience as a trend,” the group added in a report dated June 8 and recently posted on its Web site, www.nfpa.org.
The 87 deaths was the lowest figure since 1992, when there were 75 deaths, and 1993, with 79 deaths, the report said. The group first began keeping detailed statistics on firefighter deaths in 1977.
A majority of the firefighters who died on duty last year were on their way to or from a fire or in training, and most of them died in a vehicle accident or from heart attacks, the report said.
Twenty-five firefighters died at the scene of a fire — 16 of them were volunteer firefighters. Of the nine career, or salaried, firefighters, three were from New York City.
The city firefighters were Lt. Curtis Meyran and firefighter John Bellew, who died when they jumped out of a window without personal safety ropes as they tried to escape a Bronx tenement fire, and firefighter Richard Sclafani, killed later the same day in a fire in a private home in Brooklyn.
The latest report comes just before a planned memorial service this weekend on the fifth anniversary of the Father’s Day fire that claimed the lives of three city firefighters from Long Island in a fire and explosion at an Astoria hardware store.
Fire chiefs across the country had already planned a special day next week devoted to safety to address what they regard as an “unacceptable” number of line-of-duty deaths and injuries.
During the second annual “Safety Stand Down,” scheduled for June 21, fire departments will suspend all non-emergency functions and conduct drills, discussion groups and other safety-related activities.