Cop risked death to rescue S.I. colleague and his kin
IS HOUSE was filling with water. His pregnant wife was taking shelter in an upstairs bathroom, not far from where his 2-year-old son was sound asleep.
Outside, his neighbors’ homes were being torn from their foundations.
NYPD Detective Paul Zito figured his was next.
Zito and his family were trapped Oct. 29, 2012 on Yetman Ave. in Tottenville just a few hundred feet from the Raritan Bay on Staten Island’s southern shore.
But he had his police radio, and he called for help.
The voice that answered was one he’d known for decades. “Z, is that you?” That response came from Officer Daniel Ricciardi — Zito’s childhood friend and neighbor growing up.
Ricciardi was part of a team of cops in the 123rd Precinct responding to calls for help during Hurricane Sandy.
“Danny, I’m stuck!” Zito remembered calling back. “I can’t get out!”
“We’re coming for ya!” Ricciardi said.
What followed would seem unlikely — even by Hollywood standards.
Ricciardi and a group of cops, led by Inspector Robert Bocchino, then a captain and the precinct commander, formed a human chain, using floating debris and rooftops as platforms to save Zito, his wife and their boy.
“We were on top of refrigerators. We were on top of fences that were drifting on the water; there were roofs and everything,” said Ricciardi, now 45 and retired. “Whatever we could use as leverage that would help us float.”
Zito, who’s 46 and also retired, said he was lulled into a false sense of security a year earlier by Hurricane Irene, which dumped 4 feet of water into his basement but didn’t cause the damage that meteorologists predicted.
Sandy, however, lived up to its apocalyptic expectations.
“I was looking at my neighbor’s house, and all of a sudden, you hear a big blast,” he said. “One of my neighbors’ houses had detached and rammed into another house.”
Furniture, cars and restaurant equipment started floating by.
He’d learn the next day that two of his neighbors — George Dresch, 55, and Dresch’s 13-year-old daughter Angela — died when their house gave out beneath them.
“The houses started coming apart,” he recalled. “Another house came apart and took out the railings in front of my house.”
He could see neighbors frantically waving flashlights through windows to signal for help.
He remembers his wife, Michelle, then seven months pregnant, asking: “Are we gonna survive this?”
Then his house began to shake as storm water started filling his first floor.
“I said, ‘This is it. This is where the house is gonna come apart,’” Zito said. Then he picked up his police radio.
“When they got to me, the captain, they had to get out and swim to me to make a chain to my house,” Zito said. He handed his son, Paulie, to Ricciardi, and said, “Guys, don’t lose him!”
He grabbed his wife and followed.
“They were holding on to refrigerators, and the house that was in the middle of the street, and another house that was off to the side blocking me,” Zito said.
Slowly, carefully, they brought the Zitos to a van and led them to safety. After the storm surge subsided, Zito returned for his K-9 partner, Taz.
Ricciardi and his team are credited with saving about 30 lives, but the officer didn’t come out unscathed. Debris struck him as he struggled through the storm water, injuring his back and causing nerve damage in his leg.
Similar NYPD and FDNY rescues played out across the city.
The 30 members of the borough’s Emergency Service Unit rescued nearly 400 people over a 12-hour stretch at the peak of the storm, commandeering rubber boats because police-issued metal vessels couldn’t pass through electrified water.
Still, some officers in the 122nd Precinct made the decision to wade through the rushing water despite the risk of electrocution.
Two cops rescued six people from Midland Beach, then pulled a family from an overturned car. An auxiliary lieutenant disappeared near Roma Ave. at New Dorp Lane, only to re-emerge with rescued children in his arms. Not far away, officers tried desperately to save one of their own, off-duty cop Artur Kasprzak, 28, who died in the basement of his home after shepherding his family to safety upstairs.
Zito — whose wife gave birth to a second son, Joseph, two months after the storm — recognizes that his own story could easily have ended in tragedy as well.
“The cop that passed away, and (Dresch’s) family that passed away? And somehow, I escaped something like this?” he said, clearly aware of his good fortune.
Ricciardi said a group of firefighters had tried, unsuccessfully, to get down Zito’s street earlier in the surge, and they warned that his attempt could be suicidal.
“I said, ‘We’re not turning back,’ because it was personal for me. I’ve known him my whole life,” he said. “My whole focus was to get him. Once I knew he needed help, I wasn’t gonna stop until he was out of there.”