Al Baker, writing in the metro section of the New York Times, added an article this morning:
New York City’s plans to close up to 20 fire companies will require the Fire Department to undertake its most radical reorganization since the financial crisis of the 1970s, according to senior department officials.
As a result, the department is analyzing statistics, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood, to determine how it can most safely take engines and ladder trucks out of service.
“If we have to close 20 companies, which is a 6 percent reduction in the number of companies we have, it is going to tax us,” said Salvatore J. Cassano, the newly appointed commissioner of the Fire Department of New York. “It is certainly the most challenging thing we have faced in decades.” (read entire article HERE)
DEPLOYING LIKE IT IS 1975
On June 26, 1975, New York City notified 40,000 city employees that they would be laid off on July 1, the first day of Fiscal Year 1976. That included 1,600 FDNY employees.
Past president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association was a 24 year old firefighter who got his pink slip the same day his daughter was born in 1975. Frank Lombarbi, writing in the NY Daily News, profiled Battalion Chief Jack McConnell one year ago. (Article HERE) McConnell’s firehouse, Park Slope Engine 269, was closed July 1975.
Chief McConnell worked as a bus driver until he was part of a group of 700 rehired in June 1976. The rest were rehired by December 1977.
Some of the laid off firefighters worked as temporary Housing and Urban Development contract employees. The federal program employed them to board up windows and roofs of fire-damaged buildings, preserving the urban housing stock.
Since they were expected to immediately handle any fire damaged buildings, the delivery system was FDNY ladder companies. They took the fourth or fifth staffing position of the truck company and performed “ancilliary” duties between board-up assignments.
WHY SQUAD 1 WAS REORGANIZED AT PARK SLOPE ENGINE 269′s CLOSED QUARTERS
FDNY has used workload and hazard assessment to justify expansion and contraction of the department resources for generations. It supported the creation of second and third fire companies assigned to a fire station during the 1950′s and 1960′s and when the department lost 900 positions in July 1975.
Calderone’s Squad Company Apparatus of the New York City Fire Department picks up the story.
Analysis of workload in the mid-1950′s showed that simultaneous fires were stripping some sections of the city of engine and truck companies. Four squad companies were organized in 1955 to provide additional staffing on initial fireground activity, going back in service when the second alarm companies arrived at the scene. By 1959 there were nine squad companies. The squad companies were disbanded May 1, 1976, victim of the same municipal bankruptcy that laid off 900 firefighters ten months earlier.
Park Slope Engine 269 was one of the Brooklyn fire stations closed in 1975. The community objected to the closing, occupying the vacant fire station and eventually forcing the city to provide a fire company at 786 Union Street. A 1969 R-model Mack 1000 gpm pumper with ladder company tools and a Hi-Ex foam generator was assigned to the station as Squad 1 on December 3, 1977.
CONSTANT EFFORT TO REDUCE ON-DUTY OVERTIME
The Uniformed Firefighters Association posted a response on December 3rd when the city reduced staffing from 5 to 4 on 49 engine companies (HERE) because of sick leave levels.
Staffing was restored on January 2, 2010, because medical leave dipped back below the 7.5% annualized rate. As a result, all 49 five-man engines that lost their 5th man in December are now restored to full manpower at the start of each tour.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
Also on FireGeezer…
- Urban Firefighter Magazine Issue 5 – July 18, 2011
- Hard Closures for LAFD means 228 fewer firefighters on duty every day – April 22, 2011
- Minneapolis steals one firefighter from front-line staffing for unprofitable board-up project – April 30, 2011
- Pasadena to reduce fire company staffing – June 12, 2011
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