The Trenton Times published the following article on June 5, 2013. To read the full article, click here.
Trenton firefighters receive awards for valor at annual ceremony
By Alex Zdan/The Times
on June 05, 2013 at 10:30 PM, updated June 05, 2013 at 10:44 PMTRENTON — Firefighter Paul Palombi was following a roiling fire through the top floor of a Genesee Street home 18 months ago when part of the roof collapsed.
A 4 foot by 4 foot piece of roof came down and hit Palombi directly in the head, knocking him out cold. The force was so strong it snapped a fire hose in half. Capt. John Barone, who was slammed down the steps by the collapse, issued a Mayday call over the radio, then he and Capt. Dave Smolka went back up to rescue Palombi and another firefighter.
On the third floor, Smolka grabbed the seriously injured Palombi, who was still unconscious, and started taking him down the stairs.
“I remember waking up between the second and the third floor and saying to Dave, ‘Why do you have your hands on me?’” Palombi said. “He said, ‘Shut up, you just got knocked out.’”
A critical situation at the time, Palombi, Smolka and Barone laughed about the ordeal last night, minutes after Smolka and Barone received a valor award as part of the department’s annual ceremony.
“We can joke about it now, but it was emotional; it really truly is,” Palombi said.
Their bravery from October 2011 took more than a year and a half to be recognized because of a different Mayday call last year.
“As everyone is aware, last year during our memorial service and valor award ceremony, we had a second alarm fire that required everyone to respond,” Battalion Chief Robert Tharp said last night. The hall at fire headquarters on Perry Street was cleared out and the awards presentations were postponed.
Awardees from 2011 and 2012 received recognition for their roles in childbirth, evacuations during Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee that left parts of the city under water, and rescues from fires.
“Many of the awardees tonight are those who faced a challenge without warning and showed an instinctive awareness to do the right thing at the right place at the right time,” Tharp said.
The department faces 8,000 calls for service per year. There were reminders of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, as a roll call of the 23 firefighters since 1896 who have died in the line of duty were read out amid the tolling of a fire bell. The most recent was Firefighter Manny Rivera, who died after rescuing a man from a house fire in 2009.
Firefighters were honored for using a stream from a hose as cover from flames as they rescued a fire victim from a house on Roebling Avenue in April 2011, and for extricating a trapped man and two horses from a wreck on the New Jersey Turnpike last February.
There were awards for Capt. Jim Hall, and firefighters who were sent to Hopewell Township on a trench rescue, where they worked to free a boy who had fallen into a deep hole on the grounds of a county park and had his legs crushed.
“The firefighters worked to remove the debris, constantly putting themselves in danger in the hole with the victim,” Tharp said.
The victim eventually recovered and regained the use of his legs, Tharp said.
Retired Firefighter Gary Szabo, who returned to the department on his own time over the past two years to train the city’s dive team, was honored with the Brotherhood Award.
Palombi’s fifth and 12th vertebrae were compressed during the roof collapse. After a night in the hospital and 6½ grueling months of recovery, he was back on the job early last year.
“Every day is a blessing for me,” Palombi said.
And looking back, Palombi feels like he received a blessing of a different sort hours before the Genesee fire, when their fire truck was driving past the city cathedral where Rivera’s funeral was held on a beautiful, cloudless day.
“Five drops of rain on the windshield of our truck,” Barone remembered.
“I just blessed myself and just said, ‘Something good or bad is going to happen to us tonight.’”
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.