After two fires with fatalities and one with a firefighter injury, the Uniformed Firefighters Association and City Councilman Leroy Comrie expressed outrage over the FDNY's response to Queens fires. They say the new pilot dispatch program is endangering lives.
UFA head Steve Cassidy says the fire response time in Queens is 5 minutes, which is the slowest in the city. Plus, the new policy gives too few details - mainly the address, not details like the number of possible people inside or the intensity of the fire.
Last week, a 5-year-old boy died in a Corona fire, where fire officials were initially given the wrong address (the FDNY says it didn't affect the response). On Monday, an 87-year-old woman died in Hollis, and the FDNY didn't dispatch "an adequate number of ladder companies," according to WABC 7. Yesterday, two suffered injuries after crews were sent to the wrong address.
Cassidy said, "The department's new policy is flawed and is resulting in firefighters being dispatched with incorrect information to wrong addresses. The results have been disastrous." And Comrie noted, "This dispatch policy clearly doesn't take into account the multiple same-numbered addresses of the borough...As the fastest-growing borough with over 100 languages, Queens presents challenges that the FDNY's current dispatch policy doesn't effectively meet."
The FDNY defended the policy, saying the pilot program is successful and that the delays were due to other reasons.
Photograph of a fire truck by heathbrandon on Flickr
