By Ayala Ben-Yehuda and Dustin Brown
Engine Co. 261 vacated the half of the firehouse it shares with Ladder 116 in Long Island City Sunday, bringing a sad end to an impassioned community battle to save it from budget cuts.
Although protesters had to be physically forced out of two Brooklyn firehouses that also closed Sunday, the shuttering of Engine 261 at 37-20 29th St. went more quietly, with one firefighter crying into Borough President Helen Marshall's shoulder during a brief early-morning ceremony.
“It's a sad day,” said Firefighter Steve Cycan, the company's union delegate, on Saturday night only hours before the firefighters would leave the house. “There was some false hope we were going to stay alive.”
Firefighters were already clearing out of the house Saturday night, packing their belongings in plastic bags and taking them out to their cars as party-sized hero sandwiches were delivered for the firehouse's last meal.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the closure of Engine 261 and five other companies across the city to help close the budget gap.
Bloomberg decided last week to remove two other companies from the chopping block, including Engine Co. 293 in Woodhaven, when the state Legislature approved additional aid for the city. He chose Engine 293 because local response times would have risen above the city average had the company closed.
“We have to balance the budget by law,” Bloomberg said Sunday afternoon at the Forest Hills Memorial Day parade. “There just isn't enough money” to keep the firehouses open.
Engine 261 appeared to get a brief reprieve last week when a State Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn requested that the city delay the company's closure because it failed to give adequate notice to the Manhattan community board covering Roosevelt Island, where the company is used as a backup.
But the city went ahead with its plans to shut down the company.
“After again researching the applicable law, we believe the city gave all the notice required by law and that the closing meets all applicable legal requirements,” said the city's corporation counsel, Michael Cardozo, in a statement Friday.
The case was scheduled to be heard Wednesday with City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Woodside) arguing in favor of keeping the company open.
“Everyone but the mayor seems to think this is a bad idea. Response times will go up and lives will be put at risk,” Gioia said in a news release. “This is a reckless exercise to shave a few dollars from the city budget at the potentially immeasurable expense of losing lives.”
But the mayor insisted that “we think we've got as much protection as we possibly can, as we can possibly afford.”
Many opponents of the closings stress that fire response times for the neighborhood would rise with the loss of the company.
“He's willing to take that risk,” Cycan said of the mayor.
Cycan said the company's two-year-old truck will likely become a spare for the department. Meanwhile, Cycan and five other firefighters from Engine 261 were reassigned to Ladder 116 in the same Long Island City firehouse, while the other 12 were reassigned to the Bronx and Queens.
But some still held out hope for a reprieve from the courts.
Steve Carbone of the Uniformed Firefighters Officers Association said, “I'm hoping against hope for Wednesday.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
