He wasn’t against racing other companies to fires, or actually charging at them with fire trucks to ensure he got there first. Pritchard drilled his men constantly, churning out the quickest response times across the city, a fact which he defended fiercely. They would soon be reputed as “Captain Jack’s Jolly Rogers.”
But that wasn’t going to stop him.Īfter several years worth of heroics, the FDNY awarded him his own command, giving him Engine 255 on Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn. It was a fire he didn’t even have to go to, since his shift had actually already ended. Pritchard’s next large inferno would be several years later, when he found himself rescuing fellow firefighters from a fire at Waldbaum’s Supermarket in Brooklyn. Pritchard escaped the burn ward before fully healing so he could get back to his unit quicker this would become a regular occurrence for him. Left with no other exit - and by this point actually on fire himself - Pritchard smothered the child, and leaped to the first floor where he was doused with water and shipped off to the burn ward with the boy. He quickly charged in without oxygen and found the child, before he realized he was trapped. For example, he found himself at the fire of a three-story building with a mentally-challenged child trapped on the third floor. Within weeks, Pritchard had proven himself a worthy member of the team, although his commanding officer was reportedly getting worried about his “near suicidal” tendencies when battling fires. Four years later, not content with his current assignment, he finagled his way into Rescue 2, one of the most elite units in the FDNY. Pritchard first joined the New York Fire Department in 1970, as part of Squad 4. And all those fires had one thing in common: They were likely to have faced the likes of Jack Pritchard, the most decorated firefighter in New York City history. From the 1970s through the 1990s, there were thousands of fires raging across New York City.