Firefighter infected in Coney Island
In his storied career, retired FDNY Fire Marshal John Knox faced everything from raging fires to terror attacks.
Now he’s facing the coronavirus — and he’s in the fight for his life, family members said.
The 84-year-old former smoke-eater was sedated and on a respirator at South Nassau Medical Center in Long Island on Saturday, a day after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
“It’s touch and go at this point, but he’s survived so much. He’s got nine lives,” son Zach Knox, 34, told the Daily News. “With all he’s been through with the FDNY and his time in the military, this little bug can’t be the thing that gets him.”
When John Knox passed out and was rushed to the hospital on Feb. 26, everyone thought he had flu. By the time he tested positive for coronavirus, relatives already suspected he had contracted the virus that’s killed thousands of people worldwide and panicked the nation.
“The symptom’s fit,” his son said. “He was on antibiotics but wasn’t getting any better, just a little better, a little worse each day.”
Relatives were left scratching their heads on how the octogenarian contracted the disease. The Rockaway resident hadn’t traveled outside the five boroughs in years and hadn’t been in contact with anyone who traveled to another country.
“No one knows how he got it. It’s a giant mystery,” Zach Knox said.
John Knox was an FDNY fire marshal in the 1970s and investigated terror bombings committed by Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional, or FALN, including the bombing of Fraunces Tavern in 1975 where four people were killed and more than 40 were injured.
Knox was still reviewing cases and conducted private investigations up until he fell sick, attorney and longtime friend Peter Gleason said.
“John’s youthful exuberance and love of life may have hidden his status as an octogenarian, but up until he was exposed to this dreaded virus, John was actively investigating two matters for my office, a deadly fire in Harlem and a deadly fire in the Bronx on Beach Ave.,” Gleason, a former FDNY firefighter, said.
The retiree’s survival will be an uphill battle; he already has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and reduced lung function from breathing in the toxins at Ground Zero, officials said.
Zach Knox and his three sisters are now making a hardship plea for doctors to use the experimental drug Remdesivir on their father. The World Health Organization
has high hopes for the antiviral medication that was developed to fight the Ebola virus and was used in clinical trials for coronavirus sufferers in China.
“We want to get him into those clinical trials and get that drug here fast. We’re trying every which way to get it for him,” the son said.
By Saturday afternoon, family members were told that, because Knox was suffering from renal failure, he couldn’t be put on Remdesivir. Doctors plan to put him on an anti-HIV drug similar to Remdesivir that won’t affect the kidneys.
Meanwhile, all Zach Knox and his sisters can do is watch doctors in hospital gowns and face shields work on his father from a distance.
“He’s in isolation, nobody is allowed in,” Knox said solemnly. “We can’t be by his bedside and hold his hand.”
An FDNY firefighter has tested positive for coronavirus, the second member of the department to contract the illness, officials said Saturday.
The firefighter, a captain assigned to a firehouse in Coney Island, Brooklyn, contracted the virus while off-duty and through “community exposure” and not through a patient, the FDNY said.
“While asymptomatic, this member worked three tours in the last week, but did not respond to any medical calls and had no contact with patients. The member, and 33 additional firefighters, will be self-quarantined and the firehouse will be decontaminated. Currently, 99 total FDNY members are self-quarantined,” a department spokesman said Saturday.
Mayor de Blasio said the firehouse would be cleaned and up and running by Saturday evening, and firefighters who had no direct contact with the sickened captain would take over once the station is decontaminated.
“The member worked from Sunday through Tuesday, went home Tuesday with symptoms and tested positive late yesterday,” de Blasio said at coronavirus update briefing Saturday.
The stricken captain and the quarantined firefighters are all resting at their homes, officials said. The station house he’s assigned to has both a ladder and engine company as well as battalion offices, sources said.
An FDNY EMT tested positive for COVID-19 earlier last week. The EMT was not exposed to the virus through patient contact but is believed to have contracted the illness from someone who recently traveled abroad, the department said.
In an effort to sideline any further spread, the department is rejiggering firefighter and EMS member schedules “to increase social distancing where possible, limit member to member contact within our ranks,” an FDNY spokesman said.
The rescheduling “will not impact our operational response, only the scheduling of our workforce,” the spokesman said.