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(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) The head of New York City's firefighters union said Saturday that the city is partly to blame for a mishap that left a firefighter critically injured this weekend.
Firefighter Joseph Moore, 26, suffered a fractured skull Friday evening when he fell from a moving ladder truck on its way to a blaze in Manhattan.
The accident was still under investigation and the circumstances that led him to tumble out a door as the truck rounded a corner just a short distance from its Upper East Side firehouse were still unclear.
But Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy said Saturday that there were indications the truck, built in the late 1980s, was unsafe.
"How can it be that in a city with an annual budget of over $55 billion dollars that the lives of firefighters and the citizens we are sworn to protect depends on apparatus built in the 1980's when Ed Koch was Mayor?" Cassidy said in a written statement.
He said the city has a flawed procurement process that takes too long to replace old trucks, and has sometimes resulted in the purchase of new vehicles that are defective.
"Taxpayers should be furious with the caliber of equipment the Fire Department is forcing its firefighters to operate with," Cassidy said.
The fire department said in a statement that it "has been proactive in addressing the issue of procuring and repairing fire trucks." It said it had tried to work with the unions on the issue and called Cassidy "disingenuous in his comments regarding this."
The department said Clintonville, Wis.-based Seagrave Fire Apparatus LLC, which makes the city's fire trucks, "has experienced recent problems in meeting its responsibilities both in supplying new vehicles and making warranty repairs."
"The FDNY has been aggressive and relentless in pressuring the firm to improve, or risk losing our business," the statement said. "Since then, there have been measurable improvements and the FDNY will keep the pressure up to make certain Seagrave meets all of its contractual obligations."
The statement said the department "is committed to providing the best equipment for firefighters" and would wait for results of investigations to determine the cause of the accident.
A Seagrave employee reached by telephone said comment from the company would have to come from its CEO, who he said he would try to contact Saturday afternoon.
Moore, a member of the department for three years, was in critical but stable condition at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center. He was assigned to Ladder Company 13, which is around a corner from where the accident took place at 8:30 p.m.
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