Across Daniel A. Nigro’s 73 years, there’s been one constant: the New York City Fire Department. He followed his father into the ranks in 1969, and in the 53 years since, Mr. Nigro held almost every job there is to hold in the department, from “probie” at a Manhattan engine house to fire commissioner.
On Wednesday, he will retire after eight years as the department’s leader.
Mr. Nigro has seen it all, or most of it — from the crime-ridden ’70s to the “War Years” of the ’80s, when fires were common in New York, to the city’s resurgence in the 2000s. Last month, he was at the scene of a fire that killed 17 people in the Bronx — one of the deadliest in the city in decades.
He led the department through the Sept. 11 terror attacks, taking over as chief of department for his longtime friend, Chief Peter Ganci, who was killed in the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As fire commissioner — he was appointed in 2014 after retiring for the first time in 2002 — he has weathered allegations of racial bias as the department sought to diversify.
Here, in an edited conversation, Mr. Nigro talks about what he has learned — about fire, about the city and about how the country’s most storied fire department should remake itself.
You’ve seen the department and the city evolve over half a century. How have things changed in New York firefighting?
In those years, arson was a tremendous factor. Whether it was arson for profit, whether it was arson for people just wanting to get out of their miserable circumstance, into something better.
What happened with arson?
Whatever was going on back then, people got wise to it. The department had a whole redcap program for a number of years, fire marshals with red baseball caps that were in neighborhoods that were prone to arson, really working hard to catch people and prosecute people.
When I worked in East Harlem, half of the buildings were vacant. But there are not too many vacant buildings in New York City anymore.
New York’s neighborhoods have changed, too. There’s income disparity, different language barriers. How has that affected you?
In certain areas with new construction, they’re all required now to have fire safety built into them with sprinklers and whatnot. You see much safer buildings, and certain other areas that were depressed at one time have, I guess you could say, gentrified to a certain extent. People are able to pay higher rents, and landlords are able to make improvements in the buildings.
But there’s still areas in our city where the disparity shows, and that’s where the problems are. You could do the demographics on a neighborhood, and you can realize that the need for responding to structural fires will be higher there.
The very act of responding to a fire must be completely different now than it was when you started.
When I started, there was a system where they rang a sequence of bells in the firehouse, and you counted the bells. And if it said 7-2-3, you knew the box was at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. Now, things come over computers and we have G.P.S. But firefighting has remained a very physical task, of a bunch of people responding with heavy equipment and having to enter a difficult environment to put water on a fire.
You’ve talked a lot about Sept. 11 and what that day meant for you and meant for the department. Can you reflect on that?
I’ve said you have a life before 9/11, and then life changed forever, after 9/11. You don’t completely remove yourself from what happened. A little bit of sadness stays with you. I think the city at that time, for a very short, short period of time was kind of like Camelot. You know, everyone was together for that one brief, shining moment. And you can’t expect that to last.
Do you still feel like the Fire Department has the kind of public support it had after 9/11? Obviously there’s been public criticism of your partner agency, the police.
I think so. With rare exceptions — maybe we have a bad someone doing something they shouldn’t — for the most part, people look up to the Fire Department, and we don’t have the same difficult issues a police department has.
You helped oversee the merger of E.M.S. into the Fire Department. There’s a lot of talk about pay disparities within E.M.S. Do you think that playing field should be more equal?
It takes a lot of training to be a paramedic. I would not be disturbed if the paramedics received more pay, and nor would I be if our E.M.T.s negotiated a contract that got them more money.
The department has diversified significantly during your tenure, but it still lags behind other agencies. Why has it been so difficult?
The department was 93 percent white at one time. To get up to a number that’s acceptable in the civil service system takes time.I think we’re doing a pretty good job and moving forward in that regard.
The department has, I think, has done a very good job in these past eight years. Now we still have a distance to go. But we will get there. The department certainly looks a lot more like the city than it did years ago.
What do you think has held it back?
The hiring process is based on the civil service exam, and to hire off a list limits the speed in which they can diversify.I think what held it back is the department being myopic in not seeing — or seeing it, and just not caring — that, “Hey, we know there’s something wrong here that everyone in this department is a white man.”
What’s one thing that you wish you’d done differently?
I think you always look back and see, you know, you maybe didn’t complete everything that started. For the most part, I moved the department in the direction I wanted to move it: to better respect and integrate E.M.S. and to better diversify the department. And I can’t say “mission accomplished.” I’ll never say that. I would just say that I hope my successor continues to move in that direction.
