27 New Lieutenants Promoted in the FDNY Bureau of EMS
August 10, 2016
Commissioner Nigro presided over a promotion ceremony for 27 new Lieutenants in the FDNY Bureau of EMS on Wednesday, August 10 at the FDNY Training Academy on Randalls Island. The new Lieutenants comprise more than 330 years of experience administering emergency pre-hospital care throughout New York City.
“First as EMTs, then as Paramedics, you have responded day and night to calls for help throughout our city,” said Commissioner Nigro. “You care deeply about our mission, and starting today, it’s now your turn to mold others, to lead by example and to carry on the traditions of the department.”
Commissioner Nigro noted that just one week prior to the promotion ceremony, one of the new Lieutenants, Samuel Jimenez, was flagged down during a training exercise at FDNY Training Academy by several people who had just watched their friend collapse.
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“He wasn’t breathing and his heart wasn’t beating. He was in cardiac arrest. We performed CPR, defibrillated the patient twice, and got his pulse back by the time the ambulance arrived,” said Lt. Jimenez. “We’re trained to work in all sorts of environments. You never know where your patient will be, or what situation you’ll be in. We rely on our training to help people in any circumstance.”
“It’s remarkable the number of times our Department answers the call for help, more than 1.7 million times in the last year alone,” said Chief of Department James Leonard. “Thousands of times a day FDNY members come through the door or respond to an incident on the street and bring calm and order to chaos.”
Both Commissioner Nigro and Chief Leonard praised FDNY EMTs and Paramedics for the outstanding care administered the day before when three Firefighters were critically injured at two separate incidents (a 4-alarm fire and an apparatus accident) in the Bronx.
Among the new Lieutenants were two veterans of the United States military, including Lt. Sikinia Kemp, who serves as a Medic in the Air Force. “My mission is to extract, transport and stabilize injured military members and civilians in times of war. I know that it’s my destiny to take care of people. I’ve been doing it my whole life,” says Lt. Kemp. “I love my job, and I love the Department because we are a family. I get to see people come back from the brink of death to life again, knowing that I was able to give them a second chance. I love being able to make a difference every day.”