Ensure Fire Truck Safety

The Fire Department and its unions representing Firefighters and officers are at odds over whether the head injuries suffered by a Firefighter when he tumbled off a moving fire truck in May resulted from a defective latch system.

The union is basing its claim that this was the cause of Thomas LaBara's fall on an FDNY report by Chief of Safety Allen Hay, who found that "the door latch mechanism did not properly engage the latch pin." What particularly disturbed the Uniformed Firefighters' Association and the Uniformed Fire Officers' Association was that Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta never disclosed the finding to them.

An agency spokesman said that Commissioner Scoppetta has asked two top officials to review the latch mechanisms on the entire FDNY fleet with an eye toward making them foolproof. UFA President Steve Cassidy noted the LaBara incident was the second time in six months that a firefighter was ejected from a moving truck.

At a press conference during which he revealed the contents of Mr. Hay's report, he questioned why the department had yet to demand alterations on its vehicles by the manufacturer, Seagrave. One agency source told this newspaper's Ginger Adams Otis that newer truck models are constructed differently, claiming this would eliminate the chance of future mishaps caused by faulty latches.

But UFOA President Pete Gorman makes a valid point when he asks why, if the department was acting in good faith to prevent recurrences, it never shared the contents of Chief Hay's report, which was leaked to the UFA.

Footage of the LaBara incident showed that the 28-year-old Firefighter was not wearing his seatbelt at the time of his fall. That is not uncommon: many firefighters try to save time in responding to a call by jumping on their rigs while not wearing their full gear. Until they are fully outfitted, they can't buckle their seatbelts.

As Captain Gorman noted, the FDNY has been so heavily reliant on average response time as a performance indicator that it clashed with the UFOA when it told its members to ensure that those under their command obeyed national traffic regulations when riding through intersections because of the fallout from a case in which a truck went through a red light and killed one occupant of a car. Mr. Scoppetta suspected that union officials were encouraging a work slowdown to protest disciplinary action against that company's driver, despite heated denials by the unions.

Just as public safety should not be sacrificed for a few seconds' difference in response time, firefighters should not be put at risk either. Until the latch mechanism problem is corrected to ensure no repeats of the May accident, it is wise for firefighters to be in full gear by the time they board their rigs so that they can be safely strapped in.