by ARI PAUL
Calling a new dispatch policy in Queens an "idiotic" "Band-Aid" approach, Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy Feb. 26 implored the Fire Department to scrap the protocol and increase fire units in the borough.
The procedures were defended, however, by the head of the fire dispatchers' union.
Joined by Queens Council Member Leroy Comrie during a press conference at the union's Manhattan headquarters, Mr. Cassidy said that the policy implemented in the borough on Feb. 13 had dispatchers give out only addresses to responding units in an effort to reduce response times. In other boroughs, Mr. Cassidy said, they gather more information about the location of the fire before dispatching units.
Firefighters Burned
That morning, Firefighter Robert Grover from Ladder Company 143 was sent to the Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center after his unit was initially dispatched to the wrong address in Jamaica. Fire companies were also sent to a wrong address, the union said, for a fire in Corona Feb. 21 in which a five-year-old boy died. Four days later, an 87-year-old woman died during a fire at her home in Hollis after, the union claimed, the department did not dispatch an adequate number of units.
"The New York City Fire Department realizes that response times in Queens are unacceptable and they have failed to do what they need to do, to address the issue and put more resources in the borough of Queens," Mr. Cassidy said. "Instead, what they've done is a Band-Aid approach which has left a Firefighter badly burned at Cornell Burn Unit today, and we are outraged." Department response times in Queens have historically been the slowest in the city. The department claimed last month that this had to do with dispatch problems that were being resolved. Both the UFA and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association claimed it had to do with a need for more firefighting units and put the blame on the closing of a firehouse in 2003.
"It's short-sighted," Mr. Comrie said of the policy. "We need more personnel. We need more equipment in the borough now."
Unique Issues
He said because there are more than 100 languages spoken among Queens residents and many streets with similar names, there were greater risks of 911 dispatchers initially receiving an erroneous address.
Mr. Comrie added that in southeast Queens there were more fires than in any other area of New York as a result of multiple families living in dwellings. He said he would ask the Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee to hold another hearing on department response times.
But David Rosenzweig, president of the Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association, did not share Mr. Cassidy's criticism of the policy, which he said was actually a renewal of a previous policy.
"It's a way of getting companies to respond to a location when we don't get all the information," he said in a phone interview. "We're trying to reduce our central office processing time."
Cites Time Saved
Mr. Rosenzweig claimed that the system allowed dispatchers to more quickly dispatch firefighting units overall, and especially in the case of the fire in Hollis that Mr. Cassidy cited. "We saved 17 seconds by doing what we did," Mr. Rosenzweig said.
Chief FDNY spokesman Francis X. Gribbon defended the policy in a statement.
"In the last two weeks, average response times to structural fires in Queens have dropped by 24 seconds under a new pilot program in the borough," he said. "This means firefighters are getting to fires faster, which means they - and the public - are better protected. Assertions that this new initiative has caused delays or problems at three recent fires are simply not true. Furthermore, it is the height of irresponsibility for the union to suggest two deaths are related in any way to this program."
Glenn Corbett, an Associate Professor of Fire Science at John Jay College, agreed with Mr. Cassidy that dispatchers should get more information from people calling in emergencies.
"History has shown that mistakes are often made by people calling in fires and other emergencies in the heat of the situation [who] provide incorrect information," he said. "Spending the extra few seconds to ask more-pointed questions to verify the true location of the incident is time well-spent."
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