WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J.—When the call squawks over the scanner, and police, fire, and EMS personnel are bound for action, odds are good that young Gianpiero Segreto is responding as well. At least in the local area, but sometimes much further afield.
Gianpiero—or GP—is a Woodcliff Lake middle-schooler who turned pandemic frustration into a hobby that gives him a near front-row seat to some of the most important work in the valley: saving lives and property.
With his mountain bike, iPhone, and water (sometimes he gets a ride from mom) GP figures out where to position himself to document police and fire responses in reach. He uploads videos and stills to his Instagram account, Tri_County_Fire_Response, which at this writing boasts 729 followers.
He is exploring ways to do something with his work that raises money for emergency services agencies, and particularly to benefit the family of Spring Valley, N.Y. volunteer firefighter Lt. Jared Lloyd, who died March 30 responding to a massive fire at a nursing home residence in Rockland County. One civilian also died.
With his mom’s help, GP was in attendance at Lloyd’s “last call” funeral procession. The hero’s sacrifice—he was a 35-year-old father of two, and a 15-year member of his department—left GP all the more determined to volunteer with the Woodcliff Lake Fire Department when he turns 16.
He said he looks forward to learning first aid and CPR and starting studies and sports at Pascack Hills High School.
There are one or two shots on his page that aren’t his. One is Thomas E. Franklin’s iconic Raising the Flag at Ground Zero photo, taken on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Some of the [emergency services] departments know who I am, but not all,” he told Pascack Press last week. “I always wanted to be a volunteer firefighter since I was, like, 6 years old, when I first started going down to the fire station open house.”
Also for his 13th birthday, the Woodcliff Lake fire and police departments conducted a driveby at his house, with members posing for pictures with him, and he loved it.
As far as Instagram followers go, he said he’s happy people like his work but the numbers aren’t all that important. “I’m just doing this for fun.”
He said he plays plays rec and travel baseball and ice hockey, but his recent hockey season was cancelled over Covid. And it was the Covid shutdown that left him with time on his hands that he said he was happy to fill with fire response photography.
He clearly loves the sheer presence of emergency apparatus on the road and in training. He knows well how to read scanner crosstalk, and he knows that the police respond to crises ahead of the fire department. He follows their lead and jumps into action, sometimes with his sister, 9, in tow.
GP’s mom, Pia Segreto, told Pascack Press that her son’s love for fire trucks got him into filming them on call “and from there he saw how firefighters are a brotherhood protecting the community, and that’s why he wants to volunteer.”
She said, “It’s been really hard, not having a full year of school, and missing his friend during quarantine. He’s been doing this since last summer, but he added the Instagram account in September.”
Pia said “He does this when he has a free moment, and rides his bike on calls and films the police and firefighters—anything that’s going on in town, including Hillsdale, Montvale…”
She added, “If it’s a call far away I’ll take him, like for the funeral. We waited a couple of hours for them to come by; we waited at the fire station. He’ll set up on the main road, he’ll document what that call is for, who responded, what towns.”
Even on “down time” at Point Pleasant—if it’s got a siren, it’s fair game.
She said she might worry just a little about his safety, and that of a friend he often rides with, but she said they respect traffic and the dangerous work they sometimes see unfold.
“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from Carlstadt, where I’m from, and other towns reaching out to him. Some have even asked him to come down and take pictures. It’s been really positive,” she said.
Aside from a distant relation, there are no firefighters in the family. He might just be born to it.
“I’m just proud of him. He sees what they do for us, and he’s very appreciative,” his mom said.