by Matt Hampton
Firefighters and politicians met last week to discuss their outrage at a new dispatch system they say may have contributed to two deaths and an injury in Queens.
Over five nightmarish days in February, Jason Guallpa, a five-year-old Corona boy, and Emma Calendar, an 87-year-old Hollis woman, were killed when their homes caught fire and they could not be rescued. In addition, Jamaica Firefighter Robert Grover was injured after being dispatched to an incorrect address.
Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, was upset not just at the new system, but the lack of fire coverage in the borough.
"The department's new policy is flawed and is resulting in firefighters being dispatched with incorrect information to wrong addresses," Cassidy said. "The results have been disastrous."
Cassidy added that the new policy was merely a "Band-Aid" for what he characterized as "continued failed leadership of the Fire Department."
Cassidy and St. Albans City Councilman Leroy Comrie said those incidents can be traced back to the implementation of a new dispatch policy on Feb. 14.
In a departmental memo from Feb. 13, the FDNY directed that Queens dispatchers responding to emergency calls follow a new procedure in an effort to bring down response times across the borough. In 2007, the average response time to a fire in Queens was 4 minutes, 58 seconds.
The new policy dictates that dispatchers get the borough and address of the fire, verify it verbally, then dispatch the requisite number of units immediately. Responding units would then be sent a confirmation report once they were already en route to a location.
Critics say that the policy only works in theory, and that Queens in particular is a bad testing ground for such a policy change.
"This dispatch policy clearly doesn't take into account the multiple same-numbered addresses of the borough." Comrie said in a statement. "I would think it would be difficult enough to take a phone call from someone in a panicked state who may have an accent and not clear on whether they are at 135th Avenue (or) 135th Street. But to pressure dispatchers under these conditions in order to effectuate faster response times is wrong."
In an interview shortly after Calendar's death, Comrie also said that the dispatch system compounded the problems Queens already has with fire coverage.
"There are some areas where you have four blocks with the same prefix," he said. "If you don't sit and listen and get a distinct address, mistakes are going to be made."
He added that as the population grows, the logical solution is to add more trucks to service the growing need.
Manhattan Councilman Miguel Martinez, chairman of the City Council's Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee, thought the program needed more scrutiny.
"Obviously I support efforts to improve response times," he said. "But I would encourage the FDNY to perform a careful evaluation to make sure these efforts don't compromise the safety of either first responders or the victims of a fire."
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