Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Delivers Remarks And Meets With Hero FDNY Flood Rescue First Responder
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, I want to first thank Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore for her leadership of this department. It is a pleasure to be back here at FDNY headquarters as we mark an extraordinary act of heroism. Earlier this week, severe thunderstorms ripped through New York City. The downpour filled our sewer systems, and flash flooding in Brooklyn and Queens left residents stranded and vehicles submerged in water. This storm hit our city fast. Two inches of rain fell in less than an hour. Not every New Yorker was able to get shelter. One of those New Yorkers was Carmen Pinto, the principal of P.S. 81, Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in Bed-Stuy, whose car was trapped on the Jackie Robinson Parkway. Very quickly, the water started to rise. And very quickly, it began to fill her car. Carmen was running out of room to breathe. She tried everything. She tried to open up her car door. She tried to bring down her windows. She tried calling 911. Nothing was working fast enough. By the time Travis Langan climbed atop her car, her face was pressed to the sunroof glass. Travis was off duty, but I know that I am here at a headquarters of so many New Yorkers for whom that term does not mean much. A room full of people whose commitment to this city is not measured by hours in a day, but frankly by a lifetime of service. Travis didn't hesitate. He punched the sunroof with his bare fist, made a hole, and pulled Carmen from the flooding car and to safety. Carmen is with us today, safe and dry in her favorite Jalen Brunson t-shirt. So too is Travis, whose wife is nine months pregnant and due any day now with their third child. It is an honor to reunite Travis and Carmen for the first time since Travis broke open that sunroof. Let's please give them a huge round of applause. I want to take a quick moment to dwell on Travis’ courage. Travis has devoted his life to service. Travis is a firefighter for Ladder 123 in Crown Heights. Before he joined the FDNY, he served our nation as a Marine. This is a man whose first instinct is to help, to protect, to serve and to save. On Wednesday night, he made a split-second choice. Because of his bravery, Mrs. Pinto will sit down to dinner with her family this evening. This kind of courage may be extraordinary for most, but it is frankly ordinary for the FDNY. Every day, members of the FDNY show that same courage across the five boroughs in ways that are so often unseen and unrecognized. None of you do this work for the acclaim. You do it because you love our city, you love the people who call it home, and because you have devoted yourselves to lives of service. Thanks to that service, fires are extinguished, the injured receive care and our city is made safer each and every day. And thanks to that service, a school still has its principal, three children still have their mother, four grandchildren still have their grandmother, a community still has its light, and the New York Knicks still has one of their biggest fans. So, thank you to each of you in this room for answering the call every day when you're on duty and when you're off duty. And thank you once again to Travis for showing that even the strongest sunroof under the most intense amount of rainfall is still no match for the strength and the service of the FDNY. Thank you again Travis. Thank you. I will now pass it over to our next speaker.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
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