Steve Grogan: Reflection on 40 years ago, when Lynbrook firefighters saved the babies

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This past July marked the 40th anniversary of the New York City blackout of 1977. It was also the anniversary of Lynbrook firefighters coming to the rescue, during the blackout, to save the lives of 41 premature babies.

On July 14, 1977, at 3 a.m., the Floodlight Unit of the Lynbrook Fire Department was requested by the FDNY to respond to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. There was a desperate need of a generator to light up portions of the darkened hospital. The Floodlight vehicle, back then, contained a 15-kilowatt generator.

Led by an assistant chief, 10 members of the unit responded on their rig to New York City. They travelled in complete darkness to the city, except for the headlights and the rotating red lights on the fire truck and the chief’s car.

After traveling through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, they arrived at Bellevue. There they learned that another generator had just been found, but a generator was desperately needed at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The firefighters were told that newborn and premature babies were dying at the hospital because there was no power to the incubators.

The firefighters raced back to Brooklyn, arriving just after 4 a.m. They learned upon arrival that babies were being wrapped in aluminum foil to keep them warm.

The firefighters hooked up the unit’s generator by running a power line from the truck through a hospital window to the hospital’s power grid. The first to receive electricity from the truck was the incubators in the neo-natal nursery, where 41 babies were near death from the lack of heat.

At the time, one of the doctors said that because the babies have no fat, they lose heat fast, which could result in cardiac arrest or serious breathing problems.

Besides helping the babies, additional power lines from the truck were used to power portable lights that lit up five floors of the hospital.

Firefighters would later say that doctors were operating in the parking lot with portable lights supplied by the FDNY. Meanwhile, in nearby neighborhoods, rioting and gunshots were occurring.

The firefighters stayed at the hospital for over 15 hours until they were relieved by the National Guard, which brought in its own generator and took over supplying power to the hospital.

All the babies in the incubators survived.

The president of the hsopital praised the Lynbrook firefighters. “Because of your help, 41 premature and extremely sick newborn infants are alive today,” the president said at the time. “On behalf of the families of these infants and our hospital, we wish to thank you.”

It’s hard to believe that 40 years have gone by since that day, and those newborns are now 40-years-old, living lives that were given to them by our Lynbrook volunteer firefighters.

The Lynbrook firefighters that went to New York City that day were Assistant Chief William Quinn, Captain Gordon MacLemon, Lt. Jerry McLaughlin, Bill Dauscher, Bill Hahl, Bob Shephard, Fred Pearsall, Peter Skeris, Michael Misterly, Art DeCelle, and Robert Meier. Bill Dauscher and Bill Hahl are still members of the Floodlight Unit and Tally-Ho Engine Company 3. All the others have either moved away or died.

Steve Grogan is a former Lynbrook Village Trustee and current member of the Lynbrook Fire Department.