A Staten Island firefighter died last night of a rare form of blood cancer that he contracted while working at Ground Zero.
Roy Chelsen, 51, became the first 9/11 hero to die since President Obama signed the Zadroga bill, granting federal health aid to the earliest responders of the terror attacks.
Chelsen, a 22-year FDNY veteran FDNY, died at 6 p.m. surrounded by loved ones in upstate Warwick.
Fellow firefighter Kevin Murray, who was there at the end, recalled that “he saved my life on 9/11.”
Murray said he was in Tower 1 when Chelsen, who had gone outside, “saw all the devastation” and, realizing that the immense skyscraper was about to collapse, “ran back — through all that — to tell us that we had to get out.”
Chelsen underwent two unsuccessful stem-cell transplants and died waiting for a bone-marrow transplant.