Skip to main content Skip to main navigation

Ronald R. Spadafora papers

Call Number

MS 3134

Date

1911-2018 (bulk, 1970s-2010s), inclusive

Creator

Spadafora, Ronald R.

Extent

219 Linear feet in 204 record cartons, 4 oversize boxes, and 2 flat file folders

Language of Materials

The documents in the collection are in English.

Abstract

The collection includes material created or compiled by Ronald Spadafora (1954-2018) over the course of his 40 year career as a professional firefighter and officer with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), and as an author and teacher contributing to the development of the firefighting profession. Prominent in the collection are materials related to the human remains recovery projects (2001-2002, 2006-2007) conducted at Ground Zero, the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. In addition there is extensive material concerning FDNY firefighting policies, procedures, plans, training, investigations, incident management, and other such matters. FDNY's deployment of officers to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is represented, as are other specific incidents in New York and elsewhere. The collection also holds material related to Spadafora's personal life, interests, and education.

Biographical / Historical

Ronald R. Spadafora (1954-2018) was a 40 year veteran of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). Beginning his career in 1978 as a probationary firefighter, Spadafora was promoted steadily through the ranks, eventually attaining the rank of Assistant Chief (4 stars). Spadafora's career path would lead him to Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001, where he was Chief Safety Officer and Incident Commander for the Recovery Operation in 2001-02. He was a prolific author and an adjunct professor in the disciplines of fire science, fire prevention, and other matters related to the profession of firefighting.

Ron, or "Ronnie," Spadafora was born on July 8, 1954 in Ozone Park, Queens, New York and attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn. He was athletic, winning track awards and earning a black belt in martial arts, becoming a sensei in Goshin Ryu Jiu-Jitsu in the 1970s. Spadafora graduated from the Queens College campus of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1977 with a BA in Health Education.

In the mid-1970s, Spadafora worked for Pinkerton Security as an armed patrol officer for the New York Racing Authority. In September 1978, he was hired by the FDNY as a probationary firefighter (also referred to as a "proby" or "probie") after finishing in the first class of 121 candidates selected from the top of New York City's firefighter eligibility list of 7,847 names. He started his firefighting career at Engine 237 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Promotions through three grades of Firefighter came steadily in the next years, followed by promotions to Fire Marshal (1984) and Lieutenant (1986). During these years, Spadafora continued his formal education, graduating in 1982 with a MPS in Criminal Justice from the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University after writing his thesis on "New Technology and Techniques in Arson Investigation." He earned a second Bachelor's degree in 1986, a BS in Fire Science from CUNY's John Jay College.

On the job, Spadafora continued his advancement with promotions to Captain (1989), Battalion Chief (1996), and to Deputy Chief (2000). He also continued through the 1980s and 1990s with extensive in-service education, including on subjects such as hazardous materials, incident command, and emergency response to nuclear, biological, and chemical materials. Given this background, after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, Deputy Chief Spadafora was given the responsibility of Chief Site Safety Officer for the Recovery Operation at Ground Zero, from October 2001 until its final day on June 24, 2002. Although that operation closed, WTC/Ground Zero would re-emerge repeatedly through the rest of Spadafora's life. He was a frequent participant and speaker on the subject and lessons learned, including as the committee member representing fire protection, evacuation and structural issues on the WTC Building Code Task Force that led to the WTC Skyscraper Safety Bill of 2004. In 2006, when bone fragments were found in a Con Ed manhole at the WTC site, a new recovery project was initiated; Spadafora, by then a Deputy Assistant Chief and Chief of Logistics for the FDNY, participated in the multi-agency task force which concluded in 2008. Tragically, Spadafora was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2015; he died on June 23, 2018, becoming the 178th member of the FDNY to die of illness related to the 9/11 attack.

Subsequent to the 2001-2002 WTC Recovery Operation, Spadafora was promoted to Deputy Assistant Chief (2 star) and continued as FDNY's Chief of Logistics as part of FDNY's Fire Operations division. In this role, he led the Incident Management Team during New York's black-out of August 2003 and went to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 as Deputy Incident Commander of the New York team sent to assist that city. In 2010 he was promoted to Assistant Chief (3 star) and became Chief of Fire Prevention, a branch of the FDNY that he worked in earlier in his career as a lieutenant. Still, he was called on to help with logistics in 2013 in the face of the enormous impact Hurricane Sandy had on New York.

Spadafora also contributed to the firefighting profession as both a teacher and an author. In 1989 he returned to John Jay College as an adjunct professor of Fire Science, where he remained for about 25 years, until 2013, teaching undergraduate courses such as New Technology in the Fire Service, Fire Safety Administration, Fire Investigations, and Fire Protection Systems. In 2011, Spadafora also began teaching in Metropolitan College of New York's Department of Security, Fire and Emergency Management, with a focus on courses such as Introduction to Homeland Security and Emergency Communications. Beginning in 1995, he was a senior instructor for Fire Technology Incorporated providing in-service training and professional development to FDNY firefighters, including in firematics.

Outside the classroom, Spadafora participated in creating new training initiatives, including new forms of training, such as through the use of web-based platforms and CD/DVDs, and the creation of a "Fire Department High School," which targeted students from Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York as a way of increasing diversity in personnel recruitment. For a short time in the mid-2000s, Spadafora was FDNY's assistant Chief of Training. His efforts were global in reach and included at least three trips to South Africa to conduct training sessions for that country's firefighters' Working on Fire Programme.

As an author, Spadafora wrote over 70 articles for Fire Engineering, Fire and Rescue International, and other professional journals and magazines. Leading the way were the more than 50 articles he wrote for WNYF, FDNY's training publication. Beginning in 1989, Spadafora wrote in WNYF on a range of matters from the technical (construction, green energy, fire prevention) to specific incidents (lightning strikes, construction accidents, etc.) to management concerns (training, incident management). Spadafora also wrote three books: McGraw-Hill's Firefighter Exams (1st edition, 2007; 2nd edition, 2015; 3rd edition, 2018), Sustainable Green Design & Firefighting: A Fire Chief's Perspective (2012), and Fire Protection Equipment and Systems (2015).

(The above note was based on documents from the collection and various on-line sources, especially obituaries and Wikipedia.)

Arrangement

Physical collection: The collection has not been processed physically and so remains largely as boxed by the donor and by N-YHS staff in November 2018. Generally, though not always, there is a workable level of consistency of subject matter within a particular box, however there is as yet no overall seamless physical sequencing across boxes. Boxes are numbered only with barcodes assigned more or less randomly. Although there can in some instances be some relationship in the content of boxes with sequential barcodes, this is not true in most cases or for the collection as a whole.

Finding aid container list: The container list is roughly arranged by the following categories of content (see the Scope note for an explanation of the categories as roughly assigned by the archivist to each box):

* World Trade Center
* Education
* Policies & Procedures
* Personal
* Reference
* Specifics

The finding aid first presents those boxes that include material that seems to fit almost exclusively into one of these categories. This totals about 77 of the 209 containers. Following these are boxes that contain material that seem to have a combination of these categories. The container list notes these various categories in the title (e.g., "Specifics (Roosevelt Island tram). Policies & Procedures. Reference"), noting them roughly in the order of their prominence in that box. The container list for these mixed boxes is ordered roughly alphabetically by lead category (e.g. boxes of "Education. Reference" are found prior to those of "Reference. Personal."). Because of this sprawling structure and weighting of box content, multiple iterations of content labeling are found throughout. For example, there can be an "Education. Personal" box as well as, later in the container list, a "Personal. Education" box, reflecting the relative extent of each category in the box. As another example, although boxes with major World Trade Center content are concentrated at the top of the container list, boxes with just incidental WTC content can be found in other parts of the finding aid. Consequently patrons are advised to use the labeling for broad navigation only, and to use keyword searching within the finding aid to identify all instances of material of potential usefulness.

Scope and Contents

The collection includes material created or compiled by Ronald Spadafora over the course of his career as a professional firefighter and officer with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), and as an author and teacher contributing to the development of the firefighting profession. The collection also holds material related to Spadafora's personal life, interests, and education.

The bulk of the collection holds material related to a wide range of issues concerning fires and firefighting. Much of this material relates generally to such matters as fire prevention, fire suppression, arson/arson investigations, firefighting in different scenarios, fire science, chemicals, environmental ("green") considerations, types of building structures, potential terrorism and weapons (nuclear, biological, etc.), incident management and command, emergency response and communications, and the like. Much also relates more specifically to the various firefighting methods, training methods, and other policies and procedures employed by the FDNY, particularly from the 1970s to 2010s. Even more specifically, the collection includes documentation on the FDNY's strategies for dealing with fires in the city's infrastructure and for certain events (e.g., the New Year's Eve gatherings in Times Square, the Republican National Convention in 2004).

Standing out in this material is the extensive amount concerning the human remains recovery projects (2001-02 and 2006-07) at Ground Zero, the site of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center. The collection holds health and safety training programs, planning documents, project status reports, incident reviews, dispatch recordings, and more on the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Smaller, but still rich, amounts of material can be found regarding FDNY's deployment to New Orleans to assist with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina; the Happy Land social club fire of 1990 (and other fires in similar settings); the establishment of a "Fire Department High School" at Fort Totten to increase diversity in the firefighter ranks; the investigation into the deaths of firefighters Joseph Graffagnino and Robert Beddia at the Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty Street in 2007; and more.

Document formats include tearsheets, magazines, books, print-outs from the internet, photocopies of articles and other texts, official reports and investigations, government (federal, state, city) publications, print-outs of Powerpoint slide presentations, vendor product marketing material, digital media (CDs/DVDs) with photographs and moving images, and more. The overall context is as varied as the material: Spadafora's own ongoing professional development and his varied roles as firefighter, officer, author, advisor/consultant, university adjunct professor, in-service instructor, panelist, and more. Consequently, the materials are found, roughly speaking, in thematic ways that supported Spadafora's particular needs, that is, by book/book chapters, or by courses/class sessions, or by published articles, or by presentations, or by task forces, and so forth, rather than by format, chronology, series/source of document, etc.

The collection is not processed, that is, it largely remains as boxed when received by N-YHS from the donor. The container list in this finding aid documents the contents of each box as determined on a best-efforts basis during a survey of the boxes by an N-YHS archivist. The archivist then very roughly categorized the contents into the following five types of material, which were used in the container list titles to assist with navigation:

World Trade Center. This category includes any material referring to the attacks of 9/11, Ground Zero, the human remains recovery projects, the general site itself, or matters clearly linked to 9/11, such as the later Deutsche Bank building fire.

Education. This includes any material that appears to have been explicitly used for training firefighters, officers, and others. Includes training manuals, practice exams, student and instructor guides, university or in-service course content, syllabuses, reading material found in the collection clearly related to coursework, FDNY training bulletins, etc. The collection includes a set of binders compiled by Spadafora from about 1995-2015 with Fire Tech branded training materials (and other related material inserted); these binders are numbered from 1 to 48 but are found scattered out of sequence in eight various boxes. These boxes are: 9839 (binder #5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14), 9840 (#3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 42, 46), 9843 (#2, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28), 9844 (#1, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26), 9855 (15, 16, 29, 30, 35, 38), 9856 (#14, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37), 7432 (# 39, 40, 45, 48), and 7433 (#43, 43, 47).

Policies & Procedures. This includes any material from FDNY that constitutes some form of official process, such as firefighting procedures, building inspection programs, operational reference manuals, circulars, memos, notices, announcements, organization charts, plans, strategies, and the like.

Specifics. Of course the bulk of the content refers to something specific, and the box level notes attempt to identify this content. The category "Specifics" was used to identify material of some notable substantive amount that relates to particular task forces, investigations, projects, incidents, etc. that Spadafora was involved with or that is otherwise especially well-represented in the collection. Material on Hurricane Katrina, the building code revision task force, Fire Department High School, Spadafora's training consultancies in South Africa, and other such matters were categorized under this heading.

Reference. This category includes material of a general information nature that could not be immediately related during the archivist's survey to a particular context, such as background for a course taught or book written by Spadafora. Examples include issues of the firefighting magazine, WNYF; FDNY general publications, such as annual reports, Medal Day programs, and Management Appraisal, Reviews & Compliance (MARC) reports; books and other print and digital formats on firefighting and fire science topics, histories, math, building design and construction, management; government publications, such as labor laws, building codes, as well as guidance statements on matters related to firefighting, emergency responses, etc. One specific topic under this category are the files related to Spadafora's "green book," which were identified to the extent possible in the container list.

Personal. This category includes material related to Spadafora more or less personally. Examples from his younger days include high school yearbooks, track medals, and martial arts belts. Examples of later materials include certificates of achievements, paystubs, promotion notices, lanyards from conferences, records of his final illness, and more.

To be clear, the above categories were assigned subjectively by the archivist on quick surveys of box content. Most boxes hold a mix of materials that could fit under various categories, and there is often a thin line between, for example, what might be considered an educational/training document rather than a policy/procedure document. Accordingly, patrons should view the container labels/categories as useful for broad navigation but be cautious in relying too heavily on them.

Acronyms

The use of acronyms is rampant in the collection. Following is a list of those observed by the archivist as commonly found in the collection, and used to some extent in this finding aid.

ABC: All Boro Circular (FDNY)
AFID: Apparatus Field Inspection Duty
ARCS: Auxiliary Radio Communications System (NYC)
AUC / AUM: All Unit Circular / All Unit Memo (FDNY)
BFP: Bureau of Fire Prevention (FDNY)
CAFS: Compressed Air Foam Systems
CFR: Certified First Responder
CIMS: Citywide Incident Management System
CTS: Chauffeur [fire vehicle driver] Training School
CWD: City Wide Drills
DAC: Deputy Assistant Chief
DC: Deputy Chief
DDC: New York City Department of Design & Construction
DoL: Department of Labor
EAP: Emergency Action Plan
EMS / EMT: Emergency Medical System / Emergency Medical Technician
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency
ESS: Energy Storage Systems
FDHS: Fire Department High School
FDNY: Fire Department of New York City
FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency
FF / FFP: Firefighting / Firefighting Procedures
Fire Tech: Modern Fire Technology, Inc.'s series of training memos
FLSTP: First Line Supervisors Training Program
FOMI: Fire (or FDNY) Officers Management Institute
FP: Fire Protection
FS: Fire Science
IAP: Incident Action Plans
IAQ: Indoor Air Quality
ICS / IMS / IMT: Incident Command System / Incident Management System / Incident Management Team
LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (certification program)
LMDC: Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
LNG: Liquid / Liquified Natural Gas
MARC: Management Appraisal, Reviews and Comparisons (FDNY)
MCNY: Metropolitan College of New York
NFPA: National Fire Protection Association
NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology
NOV: Notice of Violation (FDNY) (also see SFO)
NWCG: National Wildfire Coordinating Group
OCME: Office of Chief Medical Examiner (NYC)
OMI: Officers Management Institute (also referred to as FOMI, for Fire/FDNY Officers)
OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration
PPE: Personal Protective Equipment (also see SCBA) PHR: Potential Human Remains (specifically in context of WTC recovery)
Proby: Firefighter still in probationary period
PV: Photovoltaics (batteries, etc.)
RBIS: Risk Building Inspection System (FDNY)
SCBA: Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (also see PPE)
SCTF: Social Club Task Force
SFO: Standard Form of Orders (also see NOV)
TB: Training Bulletin
WTC: World Trade Center / Ground Zero

Access Restrictions

Open to qualified researchers.

With the exception of a few oversize boxes and flat files, the collection is stored offsite and advance notice is required for use. Keep in mind that it will take between two (2) and five (5) business days for collections to arrive, and you should plan your research accordingly. Also, given the size of the collection, there are limitations on how many boxes from the collection can be requested at one time. Please contact manuscripts @nyhistory.org well in advance of your research visit to coordinate access.

Use Restrictions

Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.

Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions

The collection holds some videotapes. These are restricted because of their fragility and because N-YHS has no equipment on which to play them. Digital media is currently restricted from access in order to ensure that the digital files are not accidentally corrupted. Please contact the curator of manuscripts at manuscripts@nyhistory.org for further information.

Preferred Citation

The collection should be cited as: Ronald R. Spadafora Papers, MS 3134, New-York Historical Society.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Rhonda Shearer, Ron Spadafora's domestic partner, October 2018.

Collection processed by

Larry Weimer

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:46:55 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

The collection has not been processed. The content remains in the original binders, files, and loose piles of documents as boxed by the donor and by N-YHS staff at time of acquisition in November 2018. An exception to this are several oversize items that were originally rolled, but humidified for flat file storage. In early 2019, archivist Larry Weimer surveyed and documented the contents of all boxes in a summary manner; that survey is the basis for this finding aid with its box level content description.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024