Santa arrives with lights and siren

Santa came early this year, to a very special bunch of boys and girls in northeast Queens. Their home didn’t have a chimney, so Santa had to use a ladder. No problem - Santa had come on a fire truck.
The scene was a frigid late-afternoon on Monday, December 17, and as they had for the last 12 years, firefighters from a nearby firehouse delivered gifts to the patients at St. Mary’s hospital for Children in Bayside.
The tradition began when one firefighter, Bob Scalia of Engine 320 and his wife, thankful for their own, healthy son, resolved that they would brighten the holiday for the kids at St. Mary’s.
When Scalia retired, the gift sack was taken up by firefighter Keith Palumbo, who with his wife and son continued to buy presents for St. Mary’s kids.
Firefighters are perhaps the most closely-knit “brotherhood” of the uniformed services, and by 2006, the whole crew of Ladder 167 and Engine 320 in Bayside were in on the act.