Northeast News
January 13, 2016

To the editor,

Right on! Your editorial [from Dec. 23] on the death of our neighborhood firemen was great! If you were not there, or have not been there, you have no idea what it is like. I have been there, several hundred times, in fact. I have been at some the worse ever fires in this city. The Coates House fire, the Eighth St. fire, the Troost St. fire, all of these and others had great loss of life. I also worked all of the River Quay, explosions, and the Gates City Glass, where a business friend of mine died.

I was an emergency serviceman with the Gas Service Company for 30 years. I worked nights and weekends, we were called to all fires to assist the Fire Department, shut off the gas, and investigate any possible connection to natural gas. I worked close with the bomb and arson squad also, to determine the source of ignition.

The action, noise of the pumpers, new vehicles coming in with sirens blaring, radios blasting, people yelling, oxygen bells ringing and the roar of the water coming out of the hoses. With these kinds of unbelievable distractions, you can hardly communicate with the guy next to you, I can imagine why they did not get the warning. When you are in an intense battle fighting a fire, your total mind is on your job. A large fire can be chaos, although organized as much as possible.

The many years that I worked alongside the firefighters, we became very close, especially station 23, at Independence and Van Brunt. That being my day time route, Larry Leggio’s father Angelo was stationed there, we were friends and neighbors. He was a good fireman and a good man, as were the Pisciotta’s, Luther Hurd (went to NE and died in 1988) and other neighbors of ours.

To try to place blame on the brave men who were doing their duty as Firefighters is totally out of line!

Like Bunny said, if you were not there, don’t pass judgement on those men who put their lives on the line…For You!

Tony Abbott,

Past Gas Man and present proud Northeast neighbor