Members of the FDNY gathered at a wake Wednesday night to honor a New York City firefighter who fell to his death over the weekend when he slipped through a narrow gap between lanes of a newly built bridge while trying to reach the victims of a car crash.
Steven Pollard, a 30-year-old firefighter who had followed his father and brother into the FDNY just a year and a half ago, fell 52 feet as he tried to climb between a pair of low concrete barriers separating travel on Brooklyn's Belt Parkway.
Working in the dark, wind and cold at around 10 p.m., he may not have been aware that the eastbound and westbound lanes of the bridge are separated by a few feet of empty space.
"It's a terrible loss for the department. To lose a member, just at the beginning of his career like this, is devastating to us," Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at a news conference early Monday with Mayor Bill de Blasio.