FDNY 9/11 hero Joseph Pfeifer promoted to first deputy commissioner amid chiefs’ ongoing feud with Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh

A retired FDNY hero of the 9/11 attacks was anointed the department’s first deputy commissioner on Tuesday amid Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh’s continuing conflict with the department’s most senior chiefs.

As Kavanagh handed Joseph Pfeifer, 67, his commissioner’s badge, she called his return to service an “inspiration” to rank-and-file firefighters.

“Joe has been through the darkest moment in Fire Department history and he chose to make the choice to come back and to rebuild,” Kavanagh said at Tuesday’s promotion ceremony at the Christian Cultural Center in East New York, Brooklyn.

“The fact that he has chosen to do that again in another difficult moment for a city and FDNY coming out of COVID, rebuilding and facing a new future together is something I am incredibly grateful for.”

Pfeifer was tapped to the second-highest rank in the FDNY in February. As he officially took office, he noted that one of his key roles as department officer and leader is to “sustain hope and unify efforts to respond to complex events in the face of great tragedy.”

“The courage of our collective leadership with ordinary acts of kindness is what will make a difference when every moment counts,” he said, choking up at points before receiving a raucous round of applause.

When Pfeifer was originally appointed in February, a lawyer representing several chiefs in an ageism lawsuit said his hiring does not absolve Kavanagh of the charges.

“We are well past the point of believing the defense of ‘I am not racist against X because I have X friends,” the lawyer, Jim Walden, said at the time.

Walden’s clients include four staff chiefs and two high-ranking EMS members who claim in a Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit that Kavanagh harassed, maligned, demoted and transferred them “because they were at or near the age of 60.″

Ten staff chiefs have either been demoted by Kavanagh or have asked to be lowered in rank during the turmoil in the FDNY’s upper ranks. Kavanagh hasn’t signed off on any of the demotion requests and has asked everyone to stay on as she fine-tunes her leadership team.

At 40, Kavanagh, the city’s first woman fire commissioner, is also one of the city’s youngest commissioners.

Unlike at recent promotional ceremonies, rank-and-file firefighters did not jeer Kavanagh as she spoke Tuesday. FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens, who asked to be demoted to deputy chief and reassigned to the field, sat next to Kavanagh at Tuesday’s promotion ceremony.

Pfeifer joined the Fire Department in 1981 and was the first FDNY chief to respond to the World Trade Center on 9/11. His brother, FDNY Lt. Kevin Pfeifer, died in the terror attack.

He retired in 2018 after being credited with founding the department’s Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness.

Pfeifer was also the FDNY’s chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness for 17 years after 9/11, where he helped shape strategic planning, intelligence sharing and interagency response to terror related incidents, department officials said.

Within a few weeks of taking his new job, Pfeifer ran afoul of the staff chiefs by the flippant way he dismissed their concerns about Kavanagh in a in a New York Times column.

Pfeifer said in the interview that the chiefs’ demotion requests “lessened their authority in the field.” He also said he didn’t see how the chiefs could be part of the FDNY going forward. “They can’t go out on their own and make their own rules,” Pfeifer said.

Pfeifer also said in the newspaper interview that the FDNY has a deep bench to replace the dissatisfied chiefs.

FDNY Assistant Chief Thomas Currao joined the list of staff chiefs asking to be demoted after reading Pfeifer’s statements, according to sources.

Though no one was promoted to an assistant chief position during Tuesday’s ceremony, six battalion chiefs were promoted to deputy chief, laying ground work for the appointments of future staff chiefs.

No one was promoted to replace FDNY Deputy Commissioner Frank Dwyer and FDNY Chief Legal Counsel Terryl Brown, who were both fired by Kavanagh in late February.

“It takes courage to lead in challenging and dangerous times,” Pfeifer said at the ceremony. “No one will follow us into dangerous situations unless they know we are good at our job.”