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On the heels of the release of the Bloomberg Administration's list of 20 fire companies facing possible closure to help fill the budget cap, some are calling into question the criteria used to determine which companies would be on the chopping block.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the list — which includes eight closings in Brooklyn, four in Queens, three each in the Bronx and Manhattan and two in Staten Island — was created based on objective criteria.

"You rank firehouses and companies based on how much they get used, what kind of response time and than we have to see at the end what the financial realities are," the mayor said.

But Brooklyn City Council Finance Chair Domenic Recchia said he disagrees with using response times as a rationale for possible closure: "I am really surprised at some of the fire houses they closed, particularly the one in my district, a ladder company. It's a disgrace," he said. "We are surrounded by high rises."

Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Union, said the response times used by the Bloomberg Administration do not include a change it made in the 911 call protocol in which callers provide details to the operator first before the information is relayed to the fire dispatcher.
 
"The New York City Fire Department is not counting the time a caller is spending with a 911 operator," said Cassidy. "If your house is on fire and you are having a heart attack, if somebody in your family needs the FDNY, you know that minute counts even though the FDNY is not counting  it."

List of companies and fire houses involved:

Bloomberg said, by his calculations, the FDNY has been doing more with fewer people: "Deaths by fire continues to go down with fewer firefighters, and response times are better than ever with fewer firefighters," said Bloomberg. "And that's what we're supposed to do."

In Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano's Council budget testimony earlier this week, he said the cuts would impact EMS and fire response times citywide. And the document rationalizing the closures shows a widely variant impact. In some neighborhoods the post closure response is up by as little as 20 seconds and in the worst case the closure adds more than five minutes.   

Bronx Councilman James Vacca said when emergency medical calls are factored in, the FDNY is busier than at any time in its history — logging more than a half-million calls for the first time last year.
 
"This is playing Russian Roulette because people have to understand that when response time goes up that's life and limb, that's loss of public property, that's public safety," said Vacca. "There's no substitute for that reality."

Currently, there are 341 fire companies. During a 2003 mid-year budget modification, Bloomberg shuttered six fire companies. In past years, the City Council has come to the rescue of the FDNY in the budget process. But this year, with billions in state and federal cuts to city aid, the Council will be inundated with requests for help before the July 1 budget deadline.