John P. Howe, New York City's heroic Battalion Chief, retired on December 13, 1913.
That was slightly over 100 years ago, after he had served for 25 years in the fire department that—before and after September 11, 2001—is world-famous. However, it was the acts of heroism by Howe and his crews that created that fame, reports Paul Hashagen, a contributing editor of Firehouse Magazine (Cygnus Publ.) in the December, 2013, issue.
Hashagen often writes the “Rekindles” column in which he describes fires from 100 years earlier. For example, reports Hashagen, in a Pearl Street tenement fire in 1894, Howe rescued 14 people within 15 minutes. Again in 1897, he and a fellow fireman made a daring rescue from a burning building on Lexington Avenue, climbing out one window to rescue men in a room above as smoke and flames shot out that window. Hashagen's article, “FDNY Battalion Chief John Howe: A Fireman's Fireman,” tells of heroics that put Howe in the hospital. But his summary of Howe's involvement in the Baltimore fire in 1904 helps explain the fame of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY).
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