Island Profile: The city boy who ended up a forest ranger

Some people run away from large fires. Bryan Gallagher runs toward them.

Bryan travels a lot for his work, but not to conference rooms and office buildings. The work sites he frequents are usually either charred, flooded, wind-damaged or the location of a huge mishap.

He is a New York State Forest Ranger. When bad things happen, he is on it. From 911 to the BP oil spill, to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Bryan has been part of the response.

“I grew up in the city and that shaped me,” Bryan said. His parents Eugene and Sharon Gallagher, sister Jeannine and his 11-month-younger “Irish twin” brother Kevin, lived in Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side.

Bryan grew up playing the classic New York street games, including stickball, “skellies” and “hot peas and butter,” which he described as “a sadistic game of tag.“

The family moved to the Midland Beach section of Staten Island when Bryan’s mother told the kids, “We’re going to get out of the city because we don’t want you to grow up to be bank robbers.”

Bryan was deep into sports, playing baseball from the age of five, where his speed eventually landed him in center field. His dad made sure the family got outdoors. “At some point my dad bought a log cabin up in the Catskills. He took us bow-hunting when we were 12 or 13 years old,” Bryan said. “We were out there before the sun came up and didn’t leave until the sun came down, no matter what the weather.”

After graduating from Pace University in 1989 with an accounting degree, Bryan went to work in Manhattan at a small, family-owned accounting firm, Shulman, Weingarten & Co.

Shortly after starting work as a CPA, Bryan met the woman who would become his wife, through the girlfriend of a friend. Bryan and his buddy were in the middle of a car repair, when the ladies showed up.

He rolled out from under the car with his fly wide open and introduced himself to Christine Nelsen, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Fortunately for him, she had a sense of humor. Six years later they were married.

In 1992, Bryan and Christine’s world turned upside down. While skiing in the Catskills with Bryan’s dad, his father hit ice on the side of the trail, went into the woods and suffered internal injuries. “We were there with him, all day, and finally he died,” Bryan said, “I was only 24 years old.”

The death of his father made Bryan rethink his goals. Life as a CPA meant tax season was his busiest time, but “I did not want to work indoors from January through April every year.” He decided to become a forest ranger.

Bryan took an important step toward his goal in 1995, enrolling at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry Ranger School. He left the city to spend a year in the Adirondack town of Wanakena, New York, population 50. “It was in the middle of basically nowhere,” Bryan said, “That was a great year of my life.”

At Ranger School, the violence and unpredictability of nature was part of the curriculum. On July 15, 1995, a rare storm with winds of 100 miles per hour flattened the forest near Wanakena, killing five people, and stranding 90 hikers in the backcountry. It was one of the largest “tree blowdowns” ever observed in the Adirondack Mountains.

By 1999, Bryan was a New York State Ranger, assigned to Suffolk County and four years later he and his family, which now included three-year-old Lindsey and one-year-old Emma, moved to Shelter Island.

Christine had summered on the Island as a kid, when her family lived on a boat in Coecles Harbor. “After looking around, we thought this was a really nice place to live and to raise a family,” Bryan said. “No traffic lights, no fast food chains … as close to a rural community as you can get on Long Island.”

On a quiet day, Bryan’s work involves patrolling New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lands, especially the 100,000-acre Pine Barrens around Manorville. He’s part of the Incident Command System — an organization of state and federal agencies that are ready to deploy in case of an emergency.

Wildfires in the Western states are increasingly an annual event. New York State Forest Rangers have a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, meaning Bryan has been called to duty in California, Idaho and Arizona.

Every spring, he takes four to six weeks to get himself in shape for wildfire season by running. “When you go out West to the mountain fires you are at altitude,” he said. “If you are not in shape, you won’t enjoy yourself.”

Some summers, the wildfires are closer to home. In 1995 and again in 2012, massive wildfires broke out in the Pine Barrens. Bryan recalled heading home from work on April 9, 2012 and getting a phone call when he reached Greenport from one of the guys he worked with.

“He said, ‘We got another fire,’ and I said, ‘Is it worth turning around?’ He said, ‘Why don’t you just look in your rear view mirror?’ I stopped my vehicle, turned around, and saw the smoke column from 35 miles away. I said, ‘I’ll be right there.’”

As interesting and challenging as he found working wildfires, Bryan said his most rewarding deployment was the three weeks he spent in Breezy Point, Queens in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

There, some 135 homes caught fire and burned during the storm in an area so flooded that firefighters could do nothing to stop the fire. Bryan worked in the aftermath, trying to coordinate and distribute truckloads of FEMA-provided water, to support the needs of the first responders with mobile handwashing and shower units, and supporting nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers needed mobile generators to heat the firehouses and churches where they were temporarily housed.

“2012,” Bryan said, “that was a busy year.”

When he’s not coordinating a fire response or helping mop up after an oil spill, Bryan is a normal dad in a uniform that happens to have a pine tree on the sleeve. “I like to stay connected to my kids,” he said. Both daughters are athletes and sport has been an important way for Bryan to interact with them, coaching Little League with Dave Gurney and softball with Greg Martin.

This year was his first coaching the varsity cross country team with Toby Green. “Toby and I started a little running club with the goal of bringing the cross country team back to Shelter Island,” Bryan said. “Now it’s a line item in the budget. Eight kids went to the State Championship this year.”

Bryan worked the past four years volunteering on ski patrol at Butternut in Massachusetts. He said thoughts of his father’s fatal accident have something to do with it, as well as wanting “to be a part of helping others and be a good role model for the kids.”

“I love what I do,” Bryan said.  “I’m glad I made the change. There is not a single day when I regret my decision.”