Thomas Brick's mother, Margaret, alleges her son's safety equipment was not working properly and contributed to his death. The single father who lived with his parents on 195th Street left behind two young children, Madeline and Aden.
"This young man was the father of two children who are left without a dad, to say nothing of the pain and suffering that he unfortunately went through," said Michael Block, an attorney for the Brick family, as reported in the New York Post. The family declined to comment on the suit.
Brick, who was 30 at the time of his death, had suffered severe burns and gone into cardiac arrest after a stack of mattresses fell on him while performing a search and rescue operation. He had become separated from his fellow firefighters due to heavy smoke.
Brick's Personal Alert Safety System, or PASS, which is supposed to alert other firefighters by making a chirping sound apparently did not go off.
Other firefighters did not know Brick was missing until after a headcount, when they rushed in to discover him unconscious with his oxygen mask knocked off. He was rushed to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where he died.
The young firefighter was a member of the first class to graduate from the Fire Academy after September 11th, and is the only firefighter to die in a blaze since. Another Queens man, James O'Shea of Ladder 127 in Jamaica, died of heart failure at home after battling a fire in Kew Gardens in September 2003.
Although he was a firefighter only two short years, Brick had already received an award for helping rescue six occupants in a five-story house fire.
Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated a plaque in Brick's honor at Engine Company 95, Ladder Company 36 in Inwood. Members of his family, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, FDNY officials and other members of Brick's ladder company attended the ceremony.
