An April 11 ceremony in Rome’s Carabinieri Officers’ School honored 26 people with the Italian Hero Fund’s Carnegie Medal, including two gold medals awarded in memory of two firefighters who died while trying to save others.
“It was very beautiful and moving,” reported Gabor Toth, secretary of the Fondazione Carnegie Per Gli Attie De Eroismo, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911.
The gold medals were awarded in memory of Nicola Lasalata and Giuseppe Martino, who died in 2024 while fighting a forest fire in the Cozzuolo district in Nova Siri. Caught up in the wind and flames, both firefighters fell into a ravine. Their widows – Maria Vittoria Azzilonna and Annalisa Bellarosa – accepted the award on behalf of their late husbands.
“A high example of sense of duty and human solidarity, pushed to extreme sacrifice,” stated the mens’ citations.
Other recipients include Filippo Collana, who, in 2017, rescued a man from drowning in floodwaters; Davide D’Aquila, who helped an elderly man escape from a burning building in 2017; and Angela Isaac, who, in 2024, during a violent and intense rain, dragged a man who had fallen in floodwater to safety.