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by MIKE McINTIRE
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday attacked critics who say his new plan to coordinate the city's response to emergencies does not go far enough to prevent squabbling and confusion between the Police and Fire Departments.
"I don't know what they do for a living, but they should probably go back to whatever they do," Mr. Bloomberg said in his first public remarks since the new incident command system was announced Friday.
"It's sort of an insult for the men and women of all the agencies who work together every day," he said. "They know exactly what they're doing; they each have their responsibilities. That's why the public is safer in this city than any place else."
Several academic experts and consultants, the chairman of the City Council's public safety committee and the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association have called the system flawed. The main concern is that it has not completely resolved critical command and control issues that led to confusion over who was in charge at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The new system, the first such formal arrangement among the city's emergency response agencies, was announced just days before the national commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is scheduled to hold public hearings in New York. The city's difficulties in developing the system, and the continuing controversy surrounding it, are likely to be raised at the hearings, which are to start tomorrow.
Early yesterday, the mayor attended an emergency response drill in Lower Manhattan that simulated the effects of a terrorist bombing in the Bowling Green subway station. Responding to questions afterward, he played down past problems with coordination between the Police and Fire Departments at real emergencies, saying, "The number of times that there is any dispute is so small that it's very hard to measure."
The new incident command system shifts more responsibility to the police in some areas. Some fire officials have objected to the decision to give the police responsibility for assessing incidents involving biological, radiological and nuclear materials, saying their department is better equipped and trained to handle such incidents.
The mayor said that despite the different roles of the agencies in various types of incidents, the new system requires them to work together to respond to all emergencies, although he insisted that they usually do that already.
"What we want to do is add a component that deals with the new world reality of the potential terrorist attack, which we didn't have really before," he said. "What the protocol basically says is that the ranking officers of every agency that responds will be together, and sometimes in the past they've sort of set up separate command posts."
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