In the mayor’s plan to stay within budget, he could be risking the lives of Queens residents – as four firehouses in the borough face the chopping block.
After receiving pressure from the City Council, Mayor Michael Bloomberg released the list of 20 fire companies citywide in danger of closing as a result of budget cuts. The endangered firehouses are stationed throughout the city – with four in Queens, eight in Brooklyn, three in Manhattan and the Bronx and two in Staten Island.
City Councilmembers and Assemblymembers blasted the mayor for attempting to trim the budget in an area they see as an “essential service.” Councilmember Dan Halloran, whose District 19 is in danger of losing Engine 306 in Bayside, said that decreasing the number of firehouses in an area increases the burden on those that remain.
“Northeast Queens isn’t like the rest of New York City. Our neighborhoods are suburban in character,” said the councilmember. “It takes more time here to get from point A to point B. When you close a firehouse, there isn’t another company down the street – it’s usually over a mile away. That is a long way to travel when every second could mean life and death. Northeast Queens families deserve to know that they are safe in their homes and that their city government is doing all it can to protect them.”
The other firehouses in Queens that could close are Engine 328 in Rockaway, Ladder 128 in Sunnyside and Engine 294 in Richmond Hill.
Nadia Fedora, a Richmond Hill resident who lives 10 blocks from the firehouse, said that she is now very worried that a longer response time could put the neighborhood in danger.
“We need them [the firehouse] and the response time that we get. We need the closeness of them,” she said.
That sentiment was shared in Sunnyside, as resident Elizabeth Kleven said that the neighborhood will do whatever it takes to save the firehouse.
“Whenever we have a problem, those guys [the firemen] are always here,” she said.
City firefighters have been there and everywhere else recently, as the Uniformed Firefighters Association announced earlier this year that 2010 was the busiest year in the 145 year history of Fire Department of New York (FDNY).
And the FDNY will get even busier, as the closures will hinder response time – according to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in a report released on Monday, May 23. In his report, de Blasio said that the National Fire Protection Association urges a 4-minute response to prevent fires from spreading beyond a single room, after which the risk of civilian death triples.
If these closures become reality, the affected communities in Queens will see their first response time rise above that 4-minute threshold.
“The neighborhoods targeted by these cuts will see their safety go up in smoke,” said de Blasio. “If the mayor succeeds in cutting these companies, some communities won’t meet the response times in places like Fargo, North Dakota, let alone a city where we need to fight fires on the upper floors of big apartment buildings.”
