Chamber Honors FDNY at Annual Valor Awards

Mar 31

On Thursday, March 27, the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce hosted the Annual Valor Awards, which celebrates the best of Staten Island’s FDNY by honoring them for their extraordinary actions and commitment to the communities they serve. In total, 19 members of the FDNY were honored at the Historic Old Bermuda Inn for heroic actions in 2024.

The event, sponsored by Signature Sponsors Northwell Health Staten Island University Hospital, Richmond University Medical Center, and Sottile Security, as well as Partner Sponsors Northfield Bank, Red Wealth, and The Tunnel to Towers Foundation, drew more than 200 attendees, largely consisting of members of the FDNY, EMS, and their families.

FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Mark Guerra served as the event’s keynote speaker. “One word people always use to describe Staten Island is ‘community,’ and I have always felt that here,” Guerra said. “It is one of the amazing things this borough shares with the FDNY, a sense of your friends and neighbors becoming your family. We show up in support and solidarity,‘’ he said. ”It is this repeated action of showing up, time and again, that makes this borough the great place that it is.”

Among those present to pay tribute to the awardees was Borough President Vito Fossella. “Nothing is ever planned; It could happen in the blink of an eye, it could happen down the block in a friend’s home or it could happen in the catastrophe of 9/11,‘’ Fossella said. ”Either way, we are there for the Fire Department, for the men and women who put their lives at risk every single day. You epitomize the true notion of what valor is all about.”