Hero is gone
THE CITY has lost another hero.
Retired Firefighter James (Jimmy) Lanza, who helped pull 16 survivors out of “miracle stairwell B” following the World Trade Center attacks has died from a 9/11-related illness, friends said. He was 71.
Lanza is the 10th firefighter to die of 9/11-related cancer this year.
After he took his last breath Thursday at the Mary Manning Walsh Home, a hospice in Lenox Hill, a hearse brought the member of Ladder 43 — El Barrio’s Bravest — to his old firehouse in Spanish Harlem. Although he left the department in 2007, more than 50 firefighters stood outside the station and saluted as the Woodside, Queens, native’s hearse rolled by.
“The family was so touched by this . . . it was really wonderful,” said retired Battalion Chief Jack Culkin, who was Lanza’s captain at Ladder 43 in the 1980s.
Lanza was part of the team that ran into the World Trade Center’s destroyed north tower after two hijacked jets slammed into the two buildings.
The group managed to pull 16 people out of the rubble alive. The survivors were all found in a stairwell, forever known as the miracle stairwell B.
“When you found a body part or a body, we would put it on the stretcher, cover it with the American flag and march it out with honor to a temporary morgue that the city had set up,” Lanza recalled in a July video recorded by the Steele County Times. “The rewarding part of that ... it may sound crazy to somebody else ... was that we knew we were giving closure to a family member or a parent or a daughter.”
Lanza, a Vietnam veteran and avid supporter of the Wounded Warrior Project, was diagnosed with metastatic brain cancer in November, friends said.
“He was a very generous guy ... not only with his money but his time,” Culkin said of the devoted Yankees fan.
Lanza had already bought Yankees tickets with his firefighter buddies for this coming season. To honor his memory, the tickets are going to be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, Culkin said.
Lanza was the third member of the FDNY to die in April, following retired EMS Lt. Mario Bastidas, who died on April 1, and retired Firefighter Roy Smith, who died 24 hours later, officials said.
When the towers fell, 343 members of the FDNY died.
At fire headquarters in downtown Brooklyn, a memorial for members who died of 9/11-related illnesses has 126 names on it. The memorial was last updated in September.
More than 1,500 retired and active firefighters have been diagnosed with a disease linked to their time at Ground Zero, officials said. And the diagnoses keep on coming: As of March, 58,615 people suffering a 9/11-related illness have registered with the federal September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.
“They’re heroes and they died trying to help people,” Culkin said of the cancer victims. “My heart goes out to them.”