It was a day in New York City that no firefighter could forget: Six of the department’s own, battling a blaze in a Bronx apartment building on a brutally cold Sunday in 2005, became trapped on the fourth floor, hemmed in by illegal drywall partitions and unable to find the fire escape.

Two would die after jumping out of the building. Four others were severely injured, one of whom died six years later. On that same day, Jan. 23, 2005, another firefighter would die while fighting a house fire in Brooklyn.

Those fires, which claimed the lives of Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew in the Bronx, and Firefighter Richard Sclafani in Brooklyn, made that day the deadliest for firefighters in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001.

On Monday, more than a decade after what came to be known as Black Sunday, a State Supreme Court jury in the Bronx awarded five of the firefighters who battled the Bronx blaze and their families $183 million in damages from the city and the building’s owner, a result their lawyer called long-awaited vindication. The family of the sixth firefighter had settled its case before the verdict.