First Responders

Just over a week after a fire killed nine children and three adults in Philadelphia, off-duty first responders visited residents in Fairmount and handed out smoke alarms to those who needed them as part of a 12-day fire safety campaign. They spoke with NBC10’s Aaron Baskerville about the importance of their message.

“It was just absolute chaos. For all of us on the FDNY.” Retired New York firefighter Chris Walsh recalls what he felt on Sept. 11, 2001. “We lost 343 firefighters that day and we all wanted to go do something to help.” Walsh is just one of the many firefighters who was working on 9/11. The events of that day…

Dr. Audrey Sue Cruz is a Las Vegas physician, wellness advocate, lifestyle blogger and now a Barbie doll. Toy company Mattel chose her as a role model for one of six new Barbies honoring women the company identified as heroes of the coronavirus pandemic.

The medal is the highest honor Congress can bestow.

Mark O’Connor, executive director of the Families Behind the Badge Foundation, talks to NBC10’s Lucy Bustamante about the Ben to the Shore Bike Ride. The ride’s mission is to help support families of fallen first responders and help build relationships between police and children in at-risk neighborhoods.

Last month, a group of first responders jumped into action to save an elderly woman from drowning in a lake in Haddon Township, New Jersey. NBC10’s Danny Freeman shows us how the heroes were honored by their community.

Five Philadelphia police officers, one firefighter and one prisons worker were determined to have died from the coronavirus and contracted it at work. Their relatives will be entitled to a larger slate of benefits since their deaths were in the line of duty. But as the NBC10 Investigators’ Claudia Vargas explains, getting those benefits is not always easy.

When a city worker dies of the coronavirus, their family can get additional death benefits if they’re found to have contracted the virus on the job. But how that decision is made, and which workers get it – or even know to apply for benefits – is a complex and obscure process.

NBC10’s Miguel Martinez-Valle reports Wednesday from Norristown, Montgomery County, as first responders get their first doses of the coronavirus vaccine at Suburban Community Hospital. Doctors and those on the front lines spoke about the desire to be protected against the deadly virus.

Heroes who responded to the Sept. 11,2001 terror attacks in Lower Manhattan, are hoping to get near the front of the line for getting coronavirus vaccine doses. NBC10’s Randy Gyllenhaal reports on the mysterious diseases and cancers that have caused them to remain mostly indoors during the pandemic.

Starbucks is giving thanks to first responders and health care workers on the front lines of the fight against the spread of COVID-19 with a free cup of coffee.

And as New York and the nation Friday marked the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks while in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the ranks of the nearly 200,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 have been filled by dozens of heroes like these who risked their lives to save others when the twin towers fell.

Nurses on the front lines of New York’s COVID-19 pandemic are calling for the state to enact minimum staffing standards ahead of another wave of infections

As the first wave of coronavirus cases peaked in the Northeast U.S. this spring, eight healthcare workers from New York City and across the country shared their intimate experiences fighting the virus — through exhaustion, grief and fear.

Estuary and its sister bakery, Ebb & Flow, have funded the meals, in part, through a GoFundMe campaign.

Some hospitals are opening food pantries or makeshift grocery stores inside their facilities to help staff who don’t have time, don’t want to or can’t afford to go to a grocery store during the coronavirus pandemic.

A special project at the Jersey Shore is paying tribute to healthcare workers, teachers and first responders right where they call home. NBC10’s Ted Greenberg explains.

Local first responders honored a Delaware County paramedic who died while on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis is taxing New York City’s 911 system like never before