One of the rookie firefighters set to graduate as part of the FDNY’s newest class on Friday showed heroism before he was even out of his teens.
Brendan Woods helped his firefighter dad Thomas Wood rescue Hurricane Sandy victims back in 2012 when he was just 14.
The two were home in Bell Harbor when the superstorm hit the city — and Thomas put on a wetsuit to battle neighborhood fires and helped get families to higher ground in the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.
His son, meanwhile, came back to the area with a surfboard and a kayak to help rescue his neighbors.
Now 24, Brendan, who lost his home in the storm, said the experience gave him insight into what the department was all about.
Advertisement
“The biggest thing after Sandy was actually seeing how the rest of the Fire Department responded after we had lost our homes and our community was hit by the storm,” he recently told The Post.
“The way a lot of the guys in the firehouse and other firehouses came together for us was a clear indication of the brother and sisterhood that the department has.”
Brendan graduated from Notre Dame University and worked in engineering before he decided to join the department, from which his father has since retired after 34 years.
Thomas, 66, received the James Gordon Bennett Medal for valor for rescuing more than two dozen neighbors from fire and rising floodwaters during Sandy.
“Everybody kind of worked together,” the modest dad said. “I have a bunch of great neighbors.”
Of his son, he said simply: “I’m very proud.”
Brendan will join 288 probationary firefighters graduating at the Christian Cultural Center on Flatlands Avenue in Brooklyn.
