FDNY Fire Responses Spike Across City

Citywide fire department responses are up by more than 10,000 for the 2005 fiscal year compared to last year’s numbers, and Queens went up more than 3,000 during the same period.
FDNY officials, however, are saying there is nothing to be alarmed about.
“We are closely monitoring the responses on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis,” said FDNY spokesman Jim Long. “We don’t see any cause for concern right now.”
Although overall responses have increased from 2004 to 2005, many of the incidents that the fire department has responded to during this period were for medical emergencies. These responses increased by more than 25,000 citywide and nearly 6,000 throughout Queens.
“The FDNY and the EMS merged back in the mid-90s, and there has been a steady increase in the emergency runs that the FDNY has gone on,” Long said. “We continue to work on and fine-tune our techniques because the earlier the response, the better.”
While most of the numbers were fairly consistent both citywide and within Queens, one area where the numbers were inconsistent was the number of civilian deaths.
In Queens, the number of civilian deaths increased from19 to 29 from 2004 to 2005, but citywide the number of deaths decreased.
Long said that there were multiple large-scale fires that broke out in Queens during the past year in which more than one civilian death occurred.
Although this was the case, a number of the fires had the potential to be much worse with even higher death totals than those that actually occurred. Long cited one particular fire in Corona where 17 code-red warnings were issued, but a quick response by the department saved all but three of the code-red alerts.
Overall, from 2001 to 2005 civilian fatalities decreased from 107 to 91, the lowest level in 85 years, according to the Mayor’s 2005 Fiscal Management Report.
One statistic that the FDNY is working to improve is the response time by ambulances and fire units to structural fires, which has increased by 15 seconds from four minutes and 16 seconds in 2001 to four minutes and 31 seconds in 2005.
The Department has adjusted its policies and instituted new regulations that it hopes will reduce these response times. Meanwhile, response times for medical emergencies improved by two seconds during the four-year period.
The FDNY broke down the fire statistics for every Community Board throughout Queens, and nearly every board saw a slight increase in total fire and emergency responses during the 2005 fiscal year.
“We are able to respond to all of them, and we continue to monitor to see if there are any patterns,” Long said. “We are always re-evaluating our resources to see if they need to be adjusted or supported.”
pdavis@queenscourier.com