FDNY Medal Day Brings Firefighters & Families to City Hall

Thousands of firefighters, their colleagues and their family members packed the grounds outside City Hall on June 3 for the annual FDNY Medal Day ceremony. The event honors dozens of department personnel whose actions were deemed exceptionally meritorious in the past year.

Among the 50 medals awarded this year, eight went to respondents at five emergency incidents in Manhattan. In person attendees could read about these heroes in the 76-page, full color Medal Day book, which the city also publishes online.

One quirk of the Medal Day book is its insistent use of borough specific “box” numbers without offering corresponding street addresses. The cover of the 2026 medal book, for example, shows the top floor of a six-story apartment building on fire. Though one can see by the street signs it’s the northwest corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 107th Street, the book refers to the December 9, 2025 blaze as having occurred at Manhattan Box 44-1312, nowhere stating the building on fire was at 201 W. 107th St. on the Upper West Side.

Prior this year’s prompt 11 a.m. start, waves upon waves of firefighters and their families arrived via Broadway or Park Row, with a designated entrance for medal winners on the Park Row side. On City Hall’s eastern flank, trees offered shade and the Fire Foundation offered morning snacks and beverages and an ample line of portable toilets.

A press stand riser set up to the rear of the seating area opposite City Hall served a dual purpose of allowing photographers a commanding view but also a structure upon which various FDNY units hung colorful celebratory banners for their units and awardees.

The banner for Firefighter Patrick Orlando winner of the Lt. John H. Martinson Media from Ladder 147— on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn beneath its motto, “Da Pride A Flatbush.” (A second firefighter at that the same house, Christopher Nigro was actually part of a four-person EMT team from Station 47 that were involved in a dramatic July 4 rescue in the waters off of Rockaway Beach. He’s now a probie firefighter in L147.) The banner for Firefighter Daniel P. Strauss, winner of the Holy Name Society medal, included the Sedgewick Slashers of Engine 43, whose emblem is an eye patch-wearing pirate hat-wearing skull with a sword in its mouth, and Ladder 59, the Blue Devils.

A contingent from Engine 75 in the Bronx, with the colorful nickname “The Animal House” ditched the fDNY traditional dress blues for colorful Hawaiian shirts as they turned out to support Lt. Patrick T. Donlon. He was honored with the top medal, the Chief of Department Peter J. Ganci Jr. Medal for rescuing an adult trapped in a burning bedroom at an apartment fire in the Bronx on Oct. 8, 2025. Operating alone, he crawled past an uncontrolled fire in a bedroom to drag the unconscious civilian to safety. In a first, his son, firefighter Timothy Donlon of Ladder Co. 175 in Brooklyn was awarded the Thomas F. Dougherty Medal for rescuing two people trapped behind a wall of smoke and flames in a Brooklyn apartment building.

Emceeing this year’s event was Captain Andrew Brown, who let out exclamation of “Let’s go Knicks!” early on.

“’I was just doing my job,’ could very well be the unofficial slogan on the FDNY,” noted Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his remarks. “And yet you do your jobs because you love your city. Because you have dedicated your lives to making New Yorkers safer each and ever day in ways often unrecognized.”

FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore, herself a former EMT, highlighted “The moments we saved a life. What an incredible, heartfelt moment when we know we’ve achieved that.”

She said to firefighters and EMTs, “Enjoy today. You earned it.”

Unlike Mayor Eric Adams who stayed for only two awards last year, both Mamdani and Bonsignore stayed for the entire ceremony, personally greeting every awardee and family member.