By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MUNICIPAL DISTRICT — A firefighter who braved overpowering heat and smoke to save three people and the marine-based crew that participated in the "Miracle on the Hudson" rescue were among the heroes honored Wednesday in a ceremony on the steps of City Hall.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flanked by Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano, hailed the medal winners and noted that their feats of bravery and skill had come in a year when there were fewer civilian fire deaths than in any year in New York City history.
The Fire Department’s top honor, the James Gordon Bennett Medal, went to firefighter Michael Czech Jr. of Ladder Company 142 in Queens. Czech braved black smoke and heavy heat to rescue two children and a 28-year-old woman in January 2009.
With the City Hall lawn packed with firefighters and their families, Loria Cavicci, a 57-year-old registered nurse from the Upper East Side, watched the department's annual Medal Day ceremony for reasons of her own.
In March 2009, Cavicci was saved from her burning Spanish Harlem apartment by Ladder Company 43’s Lieutenant Gregory Prial.
Cavicci, who spent over a month in a medically-induced coma after the fire, doesn’t remember anything after falling asleep that night. But after recovering from her multiple surgeries, she went to the firehouse and met Prial.
“It’s one of the biggest pleasures of my life,” Cavicci said of seeing Prial honored with the Henry D. Bookman medal. “I’m so glad that other people recognize what I’ve already known for some time.”
For his part, Prial, 51, said he planned to share a drink with Cavicci after the ceremony.
In the course of rescuing an unconscious Cavicci, he passed twice through a flame-filled living room at 333 E. 108t St.
He is raising his own family of six in Warwick, New York.
“I think about them a lot, but the thing you think about most is doing your job,” Prial said. “It’s just a job, you either don’t want or you love. I love it like most of the other guys, so we do it.”
Among the other awards, paramedic Margaret Vega, of Station 20 in Queens, became the first woman ever to receive the department’s highest honor for EMS personnel, the Christopher Prescott Medal. Vega provided care from a precarious position to a victim who fell onto scaffolding below the Throgs Neck Bridge.
The Department also awarded the World Trade Center Memorial Medal to Marine Company 1, the crew responsible for rescuing the passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 after its Hudson River touch down in January 2009.
The honorees totaled 26 firefighters, 11 fire officers, one fire marshal task force, two fire companies, one marine company, two emergency medical technicians, five paramedics, five EMS Offices and one medical director.
