Inwood Native Retiring From FDNY Praised For Career Heroics

INWOOD, NY — An Inwood native retiring from the FDNY who has received honors for heroic actions during his career was sent farewell wishes from a longtime neighboring fire house and the Upper Manhattan community.

Chris O'Brien, who served as a firefighter in the Bronx's Ladder 56, announced his retirement in April.

"Chris worked in neighboring L56 and it gave us many opportunities to respond to fires with him and he was a consummate professional that was a pleasure to work with," the neighboring Ladder 37 firehouse wrote in a farewell post. "We wish Chris well and wish him many years of health and happiness in his retirement."

O'Brien was a recipient of the Firehouse Heroism and Community Service Award in 2013 for his life saving actions on Aug. 1, 2012, when he saved a husband and father of three from a blaze.

O'Brien and his crew were told that there were multiple victims, including children, inside of a Bronx home that had caught on fire.

The Inwood native battled his way through flames into the apartment, where he found the father lying on the floor half-conscious, according to a FireHouse article at the time titled "FDNY Firefighter Says There's Nothing Like Saving a Life." He then was able to drag the man into the hallway, before getting him out of the building and into medical care, reported FireHouse

Elsewhere in the apartment, O'Brien's fellow firemen saved two young girls, age three and four.

“Things don’t always end up that way,” O’Brien told FireHouse. “We risk a lot all the time. We take gambles and this time, the reward was enormous.”

The father and his wife had initially made it out of the apartment with an infant, before the man went back into the home looking for his two other daughters, but had become overcome with the smoke, FireHouse reported.

The entire family recovered from their injuries.

“I don’t think it gets any better than that,” O’Brien said at the time.

A member of an Inwood community Facebook page posted a link to the 2013 article about O'Brien's heroics on Wednesday.

He simply captioned it, "Inwood strong."

The post was liked over a 100 times, with multiple people commenting such sentiments as, "You rock Chris! Thank you for your service," and "Definitely a hero."