Timmy Klein, a lanky, boyish firefighter, had been on the job only three years in January 2019, but he had taken on a solemn task. His comrade at …
Timmy Klein, a lanky, boyish firefighter, had been on the job only three years in January 2019, but he had taken on a solemn task. His comrade at Ladder 170 in Canarsie, Steven Pollard, had died in the line of duty. Mr. Klein told his crew he wanted to write the eulogy.
Mr. Klein wrote and rewrote, coming into the firehouse on his days off to consult with his lieutenant. Nervous, on the day of Mr. Pollard’s funeral, Mr. Klein approached the altar, crossed himself, turned to the lectern and began to speak.
“I was with Steve the night he passed,” he said, choking up as the crowd inside the sanctuary cried. “Steven Pollard died not thinking of himself, but trying to help others. We lost a true hero.”
Three years later, on a bluebird spring day in Brooklyn, Mr. Klein joined that grim roster himself. He was killed on Sunday during a fiery ceiling collapse at a home in Canarsie. A 21-year-old man was also killed in the blaze.
Mr. Klein was the 1,157th member of the Fire Department to die in the line of duty, and the fifth from Ladder 170. His funeral will be Friday.
“He was everyone’s go-to guy,” said Lt. John Vaeth, who worked with Mr. Klein at Ladder 170 for his first three years in the department. “If something needed to get done, and you knew it had to get done, it was Timmy.”
Known as “the golden child,” or “the Canarsie kid,” Mr. Klein’s place at Ladder 170 was the realization of a lifelong dream. The son of a Brooklyn fireman, Mr. Klein had grown up steeped in the department’s tradition, surrounded by uncles and cousins who would also eventually join the fire service.
“Timmy understood the risks. We all do, growing up with a firefighter family,” said Keith Klein, a cousin and fellow New York City firefighter, who spoke as black and purple bunting was draped across the front of Timmy Klein’s firehouse on Monday.
As far as luck can go in firefighting, Mr. Klein seemed to have it. For probationary firefighters, actual fires — or “work,” in department parlance — can be elusive. But Mr. Klein quickly became known as a “black cloud”; Flames seemed to follow him, whenever he worked a shift. He grew into an adept and talented fireman.
“He was very good at a fire,” said Lt. Bob Kittelberger, who was Mr. Klein’s lieutenant at Ladder 170 for his entire six-year career.
Fellow firefighters and bosses remember Mr. Klein drilling constantly, tackling jobs as large as taking roofs off burning homes and as small as cleaning masks back at the firehouse. In the notoriously rough-and-tumble world of the firehouse, colleagues teased him with overly reverent praise: “You’re too perfect.”
“We would compliment him. That was our way to get him,” said James Kennedy, a fellow firefighter at Ladder 170.
On his days off, Mr. Klein volunteered with “Fight for Firefighters,” a nonprofit organization that remodels the homes of first responders to make them more accessible for those with disabilities. The week before he was killed, Mr. Klein helped install a wheelchair lift at the home of a retired firefighter in Staten Island, said Lt. Vaeth, who helps run the organization.
In the days since his death, Mr. Kennedy said, Mr. Klein’s absence has been felt as colleagues discovered holes they never realized he had filled. Each summer, Mr. Klein, who was unmarried, joined colleagues on a vacation to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, bonding with their children. Each week, they learned, Mr. Klein had called the widow of a retired Ladder 170 firefighter, checking in. Each morning before his shift, Mr. Klein would stop at a bakery to bring breakfast for his crew — and drop pastries at his grandmother’s on the way.
The chaos of planning a funeral has cruelly underscored the absences.
“I find myself picking up my phone, and who do you call? You always call Timmy. We’re learning right now how much he actually did, because it’s just not done,” said Mr. Kennedy. “How come it’s not done? Well, Timmy used to do this.”
With six years on the job. Mr. Klein had begun toying with taking the lieutenant’s exam. He had recently bought a home near his parents in Rockaway, Mr. Kennedy said, and was in a serious relationship that colleagues suspected was headed toward marriage.
On Sunday, Mr. Klein was detailed to the firehouse’s adjoining engine company, Engine 257, when a call came in from Canarsie. Engine 257 arrived in minutes, and Mr. Klein entered the home along with four colleagues. Conditions “deteriorated rapidly,” according to the department, and not long after the third alarm, a commander ordered Mr. Klein and his colleagues out.
At the same moment, the home partially collapsed. Firefighters bailed out of windows, and others fought their way out through the structure itself. Mr. Klein, trapped under the fallen ceiling, was critically injured; eight other firefighters were hurt, but all were expected to survive.
In the days since Mr. Klein’s death, one specific memory has haunted Lt. Kittelberger.
Choking back tears, Lt. Kittelberger recounted a house fire with the Ladder 170 crew where Mr. Klein was assigned to the outside vent position, responsible for managing airflow into the home by creating openings in windows and walls.
Leading the rest of the crew inside, Lt. Kittelberger soon realized the flames were not on the home’s main level, as expected, but were coming up through the basement and climbing rapidly upward through the stairwell. The home, he realized, had bars across its windows, putting Lt. Kittelberger and his crew in a dangerous position. Fearing they would be trapped, he radioed outside, frantically ordering someone remove the window bars in case the crew needed to escape.
After the fire was controlled, as he surveyed the scene outside, Lt. Kittleberger realized Mr. Klein had made sure his colleagues always had a way out.
“There wasn’t a window bar left,” he said.
