Boston firefighters lost one of their own Saturday night when veteran firefighter Robert “Bobby” Kilduff Jr. fell from a third-story window while battling a three-alarm house fire in Dorchester. He was rushed to Boston Medical Center and later pronounced dead.
The fire broke out around 8 p.m. at 18 Treadway Road, where five residents were inside. By 8:15 p.m., crews were reporting heavy fire and treating it as a three-alarm blaze. Kilduff was working to extinguish the fire when he fell. By 8:32 p.m., the heavy fire had been knocked down, and firefighters were using an aggressive interior and exterior attack to contain it.
Boston Fire Commissioner Rodney Marshall said Kilduff suffered severe injuries and that the loss would stay with the department for a long time. He called him a firefighter’s firefighter and said there is no routine call, no routine fire, and no moment when crews are truly safe until they get home. Marshall added that firefighters wake up every day, put on their pants and come in to do the job selflessly, but sometimes they do not make it back.
Early Sunday morning, Marshall spoke outside the hospital as the department tried to absorb the death of a man who had spent 24 years with the Boston Fire Department and was assigned to Rescue Company 2. Boston firefighters had not died in the line of duty for more than a decade before Kilduff’s death, making the loss especially sharp for a department that had been spared this kind of tragedy for years.
The weight of the day was made heavier by what happened before the fire. Earlier on Saturday, Kilduff rescued someone during an incident involving a train. Over the last month, he also helped save the life of a fellow firefighter who suffered cardiac arrest at a fire, accompanied him to the hospital and performed CPR. For his colleagues, that record explained why the news hit so hard. Sam Dillon said Local 718 lost one of its best, adding that the city of Boston lost one of its most courageous and dedicated.
Mayor Michelle Wu said Kilduff came from a family of firefighters and held the work as the highest duty to serve and protect. She said that because of his actions that night, working alongside fellow firefighters, every resident came out of the flame safe and sound. Five residents escaped the home without reported injury, and firefighters used multiple ground and aerial ladders to keep the fire from spreading to nearby houses as flames pushed through all three floors and burned through the roof.
Kilduff was 53 years old, lived in West Roxbury, and was a U.S. Marine veteran, a father of two and a third-generation firefighter. He was also the son of a former Boston fire lieutenant, a family background that made his death feel less like the loss of a single firefighter than the breaking of a line of duty that ran through generations. The city now faces the same question the department does: how to honor a man who spent his career going toward danger, and to do it knowing that Boston Fire has lost a veteran whose last day was spent trying to save someone else.
