An Amsterdam city firefighter lost his life in the line of duty the year the department came into existence. According to a commemorative Fire Department booklet, it was in 1907 that the common council disbanded the volunteer fire departments in favor of a paid service.
That same year, Firefighter William Sullivan died battling a blaze at Amsterdam Broom Company. A wall fell on Sullivan, burying him under a pile of debris in the waters of Bunn Street Creek. Sullivan was 29, a native of Rockton and had served as a firefighter for three years. He was scheduled to become a captain of a new firehouse on Market Street the day after the fire that claimed his life on April 9, 1907.
It would be 73 years before another Amsterdam firefighter died in the line of duty. Lieutenant Frank Marciniak, a 29 year veteran of the fire service and a veteran of World War II, died of a heart attack an hour after returning from an early morning apartment blaze on Bigelow Avenue.
The names of Sullivan and Marciniak are etched in stone among the 2,326 names on the New York State Fallen Firefighters Memorial at the Empire State Plaza in Albany.
FIRES REMEMBERED

Retired Amsterdam Fire Department battalion chief Mike Mancini said there are three fires in the city’s history he can’t forget, including one in which he almost lost his life.
A nasty blaze destroyed the Speedline Warehouse on Front Street in the 1990s. An overhead door had burned off giving Mancini and other arriving firefighters access to the building. As they moved forward, a propane tank on a nearby forklift exploded.
“Three more steps and I would have got it,” Mancini said. The blaze was so intense that burning debris ignited nearby buildings. Mancini said the cause was arson. The case took four years to prosecute but a conviction was secured. The police agency involved was the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that investigates fires of a certain size.
Mancini today is co-host of the Valley Talk show with former Gazette reporter Sam Zurlo at 9 a.m. weekday mornings on WVTL radio in Amsterdam. Mancini recalled the greatest loss of life in an Amsterdam fire might have been in 1955 when a tenement with no clear exits burned on Schuyler Street. Twelve people perished and their bodies were lined up outside the building awaiting removal by funeral directors. The cause apparently was a kerosene heater.
Another fire that saddened the community took place on February 21, 1967 at the Guy Park Avenue home of Tony Greco, Amsterdam schools athletic director. Greco was not home but his wife and children died. The Greco home was behind Engine #5 on Division Street. Mancini recalled that blaze was electrical in origin.
Today, the Amsterdam fire department has one location in the public safety building at Church Street and Route 5. In his 36-½ years with the department, Mancini worked at all five firehouses that used to be in the city.
The Central Station was at the corner of Pearl Street and the old West Main Street, near the former location of the Salvation Army. Engine Two was not in use when Mancini became a firefighter—it had been on the South Side. Engine Three was in Rockton at Brookside and Locust Avenues. Engine Four was on Bunn Street and Engine Five on Division Street.
Engine Six was at Pulaski Street and Bartlett Avenue on Reid Hill, across from where I spent my early years. In fact, my father used to hang out with the firefighters in the 1950s, in particular Chris Bonafede who owned and drove horses at the Saratoga harness track in his off hours.