Scoppetta: UFA Forcing Me to Close Companies

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang 'THE UNION MADE ME DO IT': Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta tells a City Council hearing that the Uniformed Firefighters Association's refusal to permit 64 engine companies to operate with one fewer Firefighter has forced him to prepare for the elimination of 16 fire companies over the next 14 months to provide the equivalent savings to the city.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta May 12 blamed the upcoming closing of 16 fire companies on the resistance of the Uniformed Firefighters Association to reducing the 64 engine companies with five Firefighters to crews of four.

Before testifying at a joint City Council Finance and Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee hearing, Mr. Scoppetta asserted, "We would avoid all of the closings if that reduction would take place." He proposed the cuts in order to meet the confines of Mayor Bloomberg's austere budget plan.

Denies Performance Impact

Speaking to reporters, he brushed off claims by UFA President Steve Cassidy that the two-thirds of the engine companies operating with four Firefighters and one officer took longer to put water onto fires than the 64 companies with an extra Firefighter, noting that response times for those companies have been the lowest on record since 1994.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang THE CASE FOR THE EXTRA FIREFIGHTER: Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy says that it is a matter of public safety to deploy a fifth Firefighter in 64 engine companies in the city with 'the densest population, with the oldest buildings, with the lowest percentage of sprinklers.' He is flanked by City Council Finance Committee Chairman David I. Weprin (left) and Council Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee Chair James Vacca.

Commissioner Scoppetta stressed that Fire Departments in Baltimore, Boston and Miami operate engine companies with three Firefighters and one officer and testified that no Fire Department in the country operated with a fifth Firefighter on engines.

He added that Mr. Cassidy had changed his position on the staffing issue, saying the union had at one point argued that five-Firefighter engine companies were consuming too much available overtime.

"There have been times this past year when we had—because we were over headcount—we had over 100 engines with five Firefighters," Mr. Scoppetta said. "The UFA complained to us about that."

Says FDNY Not Comparable

Mr. Cassidy scoffed at the Commissioner's comparison of the FDNY to other urban Fire Departments, likening those departments to fighting fires in a "barn in Iowa." In addition to operating in a denser environment and in older buildings, he said that the FDNY was unique in that firefighters usually penetrate a fire building and suppress the blaze from the inside, while other departments are prone to dumping water at the base of the flame from outside a building.

"This is the densest population with the oldest buildings, with the lowest percentage of sprinklers," Mr. Cassidy said. "We continue to fight fires at a higher rate. New York City Firefighters have burn rates at 10 times the nearest city in the country. You know why? Because we have an aggressive interior attack. New York City Firefighters do it differently than anywhere else in the country, and this administration doesn't even know or doesn't care."

The UFA president continued, "The UFA doesn't decide where the Fire Department puts the fifth man on those 64 engine companies. They do, and they make those decisions based on density and population, response times and other factors."

Pick Your Poison

Virtually no one in the FDNY has denied that operating with five Firefighters on an engine was preferable to four, though many have argued that the closing of entire companies was a dramatically worse option.

Mr. Scoppetta has faced a barrage of criticism from City Council Members who represent districts where closings have either been announced or where they believed closings could affect their constituents.

Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee Chair James Vacca, who represents the district where Ladder Co. 53 on City Island in The Bronx has been slated for elimination, vowed a "war against firehouse closings" last week and said that the closings should be averted regardless of the UFA's position on engine staffing.

During his testimony, Mr. Scoppetta reiterated that company closings were chosen because of both their lower number of structural fires and total calls and due to the proximity of other fire companies that can respond to those areas.

"We have carefully picked the companies with the effort to reduce any impact on operations," the Commissioner said. "In the past we've made wise decisions."

'Robbing Peter to Pay Paul'

Councilman Vacca dismissed this, arguing that taking companies from other areas was "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as it would leave adjacent districts with less fire protection. Mr. Cassidy has also said that fire company closings would slow response times across the city, not just in the areas with closings.

Mr. Scoppetta testified that the department has made necessary administrative cuts but that the budgetary need remained to cut fire companies.

"All civilian vacancies as of December 2008 have been eliminated, except those that are revenue-producing or in dispatch operations," Mr. Scoppetta said in his testimony. "We have instituted a freeze on all new civilian hiring except for those associated with fire prevention, the new Construction, Demolition and Abatement unit, Grants and Fire Alarm Dispatch. This will save $5.3 million in Fiscal 2010."

Mr. Scoppetta has resisted Councilman Vacca's suggestion that the FDNY eliminate the five Borough Commanders.

Mr. Vacca noted that the high-paying positions were scrapped in the 1990s and later reinstated. "I think the Borough Commanders are duplicative, and I do not see why we need that bureaucratic layer," he said.

Mr. Cassidy echoed the sentiment, saying that the number of high-ranking Chiefs has increased under Commissioner Scoppetta, and that these Chiefs draw much higher salaries than Firefighters and fire officers.

"Firefighters respond to medical emergencies, not New York City Fire Chiefs, and Firefighters put out fires, not New York City Fire Chiefs," Mr. Cassidy said. "So the Scoppetta administration has decided to cut Firefighters and risk the lives of everybody in the City of New York because he doesn't want to cut his friends at the top. If there have to be cuts in the Fire Department, it should start with those that are not saving lives every day."

Decry Cut in Ambulance Tours

Council Members also denounced plans to discontinue 30 Emergency Medical Service ambulance tours. Fire unions have said that the loss of the EMS lines would not only slow medical response times but delay responses to fires because engine companies would be responding to more medical calls.

Mr. Scoppetta noted that had the state cut Medicaid funding, as it threatened to, the department would have been forced to make more EMS cuts.

In his testimony, he said, "Some context is important here, however. Even with these reductions, we have 52 percent more ambulances tours than we did in 1996, when EMS merged with the FDNY."