James “Jimmy” Riches a former FDNY deputy chief who spent several months at Ground Zero trying to recover. To recover the body of his firefighter son after the World Trade Center attack, he died of a 9/11-related illness on Thanksgiving Day, the FDNY said.
Riches suffered from lung disease for more than two decades before he died Thursday at age 74.
“He had a great legacy and was very respected and loved,” Riches' third son, Daniel Riches, a retired FDNY captain, told the Daily News.
“He was a wonderful man. He was a great father, a great friend. A lot of people told us how much they loved him.”
James Riches spent six months searching through the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of his son Jimmy Riches, who died heroically in response to the terrorist attack.
“He went out every day to look for him,” Daniel Riches said.
Jimmy Riches' body was later found in March 2002. ladder member 114 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, but was at Engine Company 4 in lower Manhattan on September 11th.
He died the day before his 30th birthday. A street renaming sign was later added at the corner of Shore Parkway and Bay 8th Street in Dyker Heights, dubbed “Jimmy Riches Way.” New York1 reported.
James Riches noticed a trend among many people who worked on The Pile after 9/11: They developed dry coughs, nosebleeds, coughed up blood, and some even suffered from mercury poisoning, he told reporters. September 11 Memorial and Museum in an audio interview.
He also revealed in the interview that he had a health scare in 2005 when he thought he had the flu but noticed his nails were turning purple. His blood oxygen levels dropped to one-third of normal. An X-ray showed that he had double pneumonia.
“I went to the emergency room. He looked at my fingernails, listened to my chest. 'Take him upstairs to the intensive care unit right away,'” he recalls the doctor saying. “They did a chest x-ray – two white lungs, double pneumonia. We drew about 30 lines on the neck, arms and everything else. They connected a ventilator, and he breathed for me. My oxygen level should have been around 99. It was around 30.”
His health problems continued, Daniel Riches told the Daily News.
“He's had a lot of different health problems over the last 25 years and it's taken a toll on him,” the son said. “He was inhaling all the toxins—he was suffering from a lot of different illnesses related to his work there.”
James Riches lived in Brooklyn. He served with the FDNY for 30 years from August 1977 until his retirement in December 2007. FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association it said, celebrating his “distinguished career” that “embodies the highest traditions of our department.”
The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church on Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge.
