LI Vollies-Small Town Service, Big City Prices

[FF402 133]

This is part 1 of a multi-day series on the problems of the LI Fire Service..........

http://www.newsday.com/news/specials/nyf-i...0,3691882.story

Fire alarm: The cost

LI's volunteer departments provide a small-town service -- at big-city prices

 

BY ELIZABETH MOORE

STAFF WRITER

November 13, 2005

Back in the 1930s when Coram was little more than a wide spot in a woodsy country road, its volunteer firefighters held Halloween dances and chicken barbecues to pay off the firehouse mortgage.

Seventy years later, with about $5 million in annual tax revenue, their biggest worry wasn't money but keeping up with all the calls for help. They could muster only half the volunteers needed to fight daytime fires, and on many medical calls, no one showed up at all.

So, like a growing number of Long Island fire agencies, the Coram Fire District took two steps to fix its problems: It hired paramedics to handle the increasing medical calls and, in 2003, built a firehouse designed to entice new volunteers.

It is the biggest firehouse on Long Island, a $7.7-million, 39,000-square-foot headquarters with spacious offices, a gym with a tiki-themed juice bar, party rooms lavished with ornate moldings, tile mosaics and stained glass, and vast truck bays whose teal-and-peach-tinted concrete floors match the building's carpets. It is for members only.

"There's a lot of money that's been spent to, I guess you would say, be the carrot on the end of the stick," said Coram Fire Commissioner Tom Lyon.

Hiring the paramedics worked -- county records show the department's ambulance response times improved by 3 1/2 minutes. But, so far, the new firehouse hasn't -- Coram's membership fell from 155 the year before it opened to 141 now. This year, the average Coram homeowner paid more in taxes for the volunteer fire department, $842, than for the county police who patrol their neighborhood and are some of the nation's highest-paid officers.

It is a story, to greater and lesser degrees, that is being replicated throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties. Long Islanders are paying big-city prices to preserve a small-town volunteer fire service that struggles to keep pace with the growing demands placed upon it.

High cost of fire protection

Long Island is the last densely populated region in America served almost exclusively by volunteers. Their service is cherished by many residents as the ideal of what a community should be, neighbor caring for neighbor. But between 1980 and 2000, the costs to taxpayers of supporting fire districts more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, growing almost three times as fast as spending by other local governments.

With 179 different agencies -- each with its own rules, budgets and closely held membership lists -- fire protection on Long Island is so fragmented that it has long defied analysis. But through hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected by Newsday through the Freedom of Information law, a detailed picture emerges of a system whose growing costs and challenges are beginning to overwhelm the volunteers' good intentions.

Volunteer fire protection here costs more than $319 million a year to run, and fire agencies own more than $1 billion worth of buildings and equipment, but most Long Islanders can't count on their local volunteers to deliver help fast enough to revive someone whose heart has stopped beating or to put out a fire in the room where it started.

Emergency fire switchboards are busier than ever dispatching crews to automatic alarms, but actual fires and deaths are way down, experts say and records indicate. Meanwhile, medical calls have far outstripped fire alarms, making up about two-thirds of the workload for most departments that provide the service.

Tougher technical and safety mandates have driven up the cost of fire protection everywhere, but Long Island's volunteer fire agencies have gained national renown for the ways they spend the public's money.

They spend it on premium fire trucks often too big to fit in firehouses and too numerous to staff. Long Island has more fire apparatus than New York City and the city and county of Los Angeles combined, departments that protect almost three times as much land and six times as many people while answering more than 12 times as many calls for help.

They spend it building and expanding firehouses equipped with bars, party rooms and gyms. Long Island has about twice as many fire stations as called for in national standards based on driving distance.

They spend it on out-of-town conventions, luxury hotel rooms, drag-racing competitions billed as training, and elaborate ceremonies that can top the annual budgets of most of the state's fire districts. North Babylon laid out $100,000 for two banquets in 2003 for 208 volunteers, and Nassau fire officials paid almost six times as much going to conferences as those from Westchester County, the state found.

They spend it with no meaningful oversight. The state comptroller collects annual financial data from the districts but hasn't audited one on Long Island since 2001, and only one in five departments files required federal tax returns on the donations they solicit.

And, increasingly, Long Island's volunteer fire agencies -- two-thirds of which are independent districts run by unpaid, elected commissioners -- spend taxpayer money hiring people to do jobs volunteers used to do themselves. They may be called custodians or cleaners, but more and more often these employees are expected to drive ambulances and fight fires.

"Nobody wants to be honest and face the facts," said Commissioner William Theis, chairman of the Terryville Fire District in Brookhaven Town. "I never want to see a catastrophe, but if one happens, the public's going to be asking us, what did we do?

"Just go to a parade and see all the equipment you've got there. Look at my budget this year. In my heart, I know we could have a paid department, but if I propose this, believe me, every Tom, d*** and Harry will be cutting my head off ... But we don't know who is going to come to the fire when the alarm gets kicked."

Service disparity

Other volunteer leaders, though, say the fire service remains strong and provides far cheaper protection than paid departments could.

"As far as I'm concerned, the system isn't broke, and I want to know who the people are who want to fix it," said William Swift, a Glenwood Landing fire trustee and a former chairman of the Nassau Fire Commission. The only thing the system needs, he said, is more incentives to recruit and retain volunteers.

In some places the price and service of volunteer departments are superior, Newsday's analysis found, but performance and cost vary widely.

Depending upon where you live on Long Island, you might pay anywhere from less than $60 to more than $2,500 a year in taxes for fire protection, and the department might average anywhere from less than 4 minutes to more than 13 to get an engine or an ambulance to your house. Some of the most expensive fire departments, Newsday found, provide some of the slowest service.

Overall, volunteer fire agencies in Nassau and Suffolk counties cost at least three times as much per resident in 2003 as the average of nine Northeastern states, and most can't get to calls as fast as experts say they should.

For less than what the volunteer service costs for each resident it protects here, other communities in the Northeast buy prompter, more reliable service bolstered by paid firefighters.

In defense of the system

Of course costs are higher on Long Island, but any kind of cost-benefit analysis is politically sensitive.

"Every town official that I've ever talked to is scared to death of alienating the firehouses," said Babylon's former town finance director, Doug Jacob. "They all say this is the dullest pencil in their organizations. Towns have gone through years of cost-cutting. Everything is scrutinized. Nobody gets new stuff. They freeze everyone. But the fire departments get a tax increase every year. Nobody's saying no to them. Truly, as a taxpayer, this is a little out of control."

The system's many defenders argue that it is hard to put a price on the important place that volunteers hold in their communities. For no pay, they rise in the middle of the night, give up weekends and abandon holiday meals to protect property and save lives. And while Long Island's volunteers are among the best trained and equipped in the country, the fire protection they provide still makes up a relatively small part of most residents' tax bills.

"People of this county are very lucky to have dedicated men and women who do this for zero dollars," said Frank Nocerino, a North Massapequa fire commissioner and secretary/treasurer of the state fire districts association. " ... Sometimes it's not what it costs, it's knowing that their local volunteer fireman is down on the corner, or their next-door neighbor. People like their fire department."

The Firemen's Association of the State of New York estimates that replacing volunteers with paid firefighters would cost Long Island taxpayers $1.3 billion more a year than they pay today. The firefighters' union, however, says that figure dramatically overestimates the number of paid firefighters needed.

Fire departments have always been part public service, part social club, organizing sports, parties and outings for volunteers and their families.

Members who have criticized the system say they have been disciplined or cut off socially. But quietly across Long Island, on Web sites, in firefighter newspapers and firehouse bars, volunteers have begun to argue in recent years that the fire service here has crossed a crucial threshold.

Five months before he died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, Brian Hickey -- a New York City fire captain, former Bethpage commissioner and leading critic of volunteer spending -- gave a blistering critique.

"It's a sin," he said. "If the volunteer fire departments didn't have any money, you could argue that nothing could be done. But the budgets are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and what's happening?"

Questioning response times

What's happening is that it's getting harder every day to find enough active volunteers, said Greg Sullivan, a former commissioner in the Centerport Fire District.

"There should be a study because there is a shortage, and it is well known," said Sullivan, who after he opposed the expansion of his firehouse was suspended for a year in 2000 on that charges that he had discredited the department.

"You can't just keep throwing more perks at the problem because it's not working. It hasn't worked for far too many years," said Sullivan, a volunteer since 1962.

Thomas Cunningham, a lifelong volunteer, former Hicksville commissioner and retired New York City fire lieutenant, said that for the money being spent, residents deserve better.

"I'm all for the volunteers themselves and to give them every kind of break and anything for retention," he said, "but in return, show me you can be here in three, four or five minutes. That's all ... Show me a timely response."

But on Long Island, it takes about five minutes for the average fire truck or ambulance just to gather enough volunteers to leave the station, dispatch records show.

"You're in trouble if you have a system that takes five minutes to get out of the firehouse," said Carroll Buracker, a Virginia consultant who has done studies for dozens of Northeastern fire departments.

The National Fire Protection Association has a complicated set of standards for volunteer response times based on whether an area's population density is urban, suburban or rural. Last year, most Long Island departments for which Newsday obtained records didn't meet them.

Most of Long Island is classified as urban. That means 15 volunteers and their vehicles should show up at 90 percent of alarms within 9 minutes of being dispatched. Nassau and Suffolk records don't show how long it takes to get the required number of volunteers there. But using the time the first engine arrives at the scene, a more generous measure, only 29 of 58 Nassau and 10 of 55 Suffolk urban departments met the standard.

Seven of the 11 suburban departments in Newsday's analysis failed to meet their standard, while all 23 rural departments met theirs.

Statistics incomplete

"Your tipping point is response times," said Tim McGrath, a former fire chief and emergency services consultant in Illinois. "What is your acceptable response time?"

In a fire, according to the fire protection association, the likelihood someone will die is 10 times greater when it spreads beyond the room it started in, which takes about 10 minutes. Once an emergency call from a citizen is dispatched -- a process that can take anywhere from seconds to minutes -- it took an average of 7 minutes and 36 seconds for a Long Island fire engine to arrive at a scene last year . Hooking up hoses usually adds a couple of minutes more.

Only five Nassau agencies monitored by county dispatchers and none in Suffolk could reliably get the first help of any kind to a fire or medical call within 6 minutes.

"If a person has a major coronary and you're not there within four to six minutes," McGrath said, "the chances of recovery are very slim."

Last year, fire department ambulances took an average of 8 minutes and 43 seconds to arrive at a call after being dispatched, records show.

No higher level of government analyzes the response time performance of Long Island departments, and the few statistics collected are incomplete. It is not even possible to say how many fires there were in Suffolk County last year. State law requires all departments to file reports on the fires they fight, but only 45 percent of Nassau agencies and 55 percent in Suffolk complied.

Still, officials say, residents are pleased with the protection they receive.

"We still cling to the belief that it is saving money and at the same time providing a fine product," said Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, long a volunteer supporter. " ... We have not seen many, if any, cases of problems related to firemen losing lives because they got there a minute too late."

'A dying breed'

Whenever talk turns to revamping the system, its defenders insist that what's needed are more incentives for recruiting and retaining volunteers. After troubling slides in the 1980s and 1990s, Nassau and Suffolk rosters have hovered around 20,000 in recent years, although it is an aging membership and the number who answer alarms is far lower, records show.

Amid a steadily rising number of alarms, mostly for medical calls, "Volunteers Needed" signs have become almost as much of a fixture outside firehouses as flagpoles. Even the inspirational example of Sept. 11, and a series of tax breaks, pension sweeteners and other new incentives approved by lawmakers haven't shaken that trend.

"The volunteerism is not there," said Terryville Fire Commissioner Thomas Nulty.

His district built a $6 million firehouse expansion, and sponsored outings and giveaways, including an annual Broadway show, to attract members. But they are still having trouble getting volunteers to go on calls and have turned to paid ambulance crews.

"It's the older guys who are maintaining the service," Nulty said. "The attitude when we joined was, 'What can we do for the community?' Now when these guys join, it's, 'What are you doing for me?' It's a dying breed."

Nonetheless, fire service leaders believe that even if incentives aren't perfect solutions, they're better than the alternative: The costly union contracts and whopping property tax increases that fully paid fire departments would entail.

"If we have a policeman that's making over $100,000 a year, can we afford to pay firemen?" asked Joe Fox, a Middle Island commissioner, during a recruiting visit to a Bay Shore mall.

"Wouldn't that union from the city be the first ones out here to organize the firefighters and say, 'I want the same as that police union is getting?' Everybody'd have to start moving off the Island."

But suburbs nationwide have found other options. Thousands of departments -- including Garden City and Long Beach -- employ a combination of paid and volunteer firefighters. They usually provide faster service and cost less -- an average of $93 per person in the Northeast in 2003, according to the International City/County Managers Association.

While Long Islanders spend on average $113 per resident on their volunteer fire departments, this does not include other local and regional costs that are usually part of a municipal fire department, such as training academies and fire marshals. That boosts the per-person cost for fire and ambulance protection to about $136.

"If you're spending more than $100 for a volunteer system, in our experience in the U.S., that seems high," said Buracker, the Virginia consultant.

Lots of spending

In some communities, taxpayers are spending more for their volunteers than they are for general fund taxes that pay for most town services. All of those are in Suffolk.

And in two communities, Coram and Gordon Heights, residents are paying more for volunteer fire protection than for the unionized county police that Fox warned of. This year, the average fire tax bill for a single-family home in Gordon Heights was $1,344, while the police district bill was $638. In Coram, fire taxes averaged $842 while police taxes were $759. Both fire districts have had costly new building projects in recent years.

"They are like teenagers on a credit card," said Gina Previte, a resident of the Gordon Heights Fire District who paid $2,355.44 in fire taxes last year. Previte and other residents of her subdivision signed a petition asking to withdraw from the fire district, but the commissioners refused.

The details of fire spending on Long Island can be baroque, drawing criticism from civic groups, state auditors and many volunteers themselves.

West Islip spent $2,000 to hire a limo bus to drive 16 officials to and from a Baltimore conference this year, even though the district has two 10-passenger vans of its own. An official said they didn't want to send emergency vehicles that far from home.

Middle Island commissioners ordered up hand-tailored $925 wool-and-cashmere suits, $125 custom shirts and $100 matching ties and pocket squares. Officials said they considered it a kind of uniform.

Massapequa officials attending disaster management conferences in 1998 and 1999 opted to bypass the $130-a-night convention hotel in Orlando to stay instead with their families in $422-a-night accommodations at Walt Disney World's Lake Buena Vista Resort. An official said the hotel was just a short drive from the conference and the most expensive room was used for meetings.

While the spending on travel and parties are favorite targets of critics, expensive trucks and buildings are where the costs can really add up.

Long Island has "always been there as an example of a polar extreme -- of extreme overinvestment in fire suppression services: too many firehouses, too many fire trucks," said Charles Jennings, a fire deployment expert who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

Bells and whistles

Earl Robinson, who has sold trucks here for 30 years, said Long Island volunteers demand the latest in technology, but the area's real hallmark is "glitz and glitter."

"Stainless steel. Aluminum. Bright finishes, places you can polish and clean," he said. "Aluminum wheels, extra lights far surpassing the requirements ... They all add up to the bottom line."

And Long Island has a lot of trucks.

New York City owns one heavy rescue truck with specialized rescue tools for each of its five boroughs, plus a single spare for use citywide. Fully equipped, each can cost $750,000 or more.

Long Island fire departments have 146 of them.

"The volunteers don't get paid, and their equipment represents the character of the men and the company that they belong to," explained Michael Norris, a Wantagh volunteer who is a leading specialist in gold leaf for fire trucks. "... It's almost like jewelry: Why would you need a $10,000 engagement ring? It's something that's important because it shows your fiancee how much you value her."

So it's not surprising that the more control firefighters have over their own budgets, the higher the cost to taxpayers, according to Newsday's analysis.

Hands-off approach

Fire protection costs an average of $124 per person in the two-thirds of Long Island departments run by fire districts, whose poorly publicized, low-turnout elections are usually dominated by firefighter families. Nassau Assessor Harvey Levinson this year demanded closer scrutiny of fire and other special districts, which he called "invisible governments."

Somewhat less expensive at about $119 per resident are the 20 independent incorporated fire companies, which contract with towns and villages to provide services. Their budgets have to be submitted for approval, but many local officials complain they must pay whatever these departments ask.

"We can't say no because we won't have fire service," said Sands Point Mayor Leonard Wurzel.

The least expensive service is offered by Long Island's 33 village and city fire departments at an average of $62 per resident. They include some of the busiest departments, such as Hempstead, which costs about $30 per resident, including the cost of dispatchers who take calls for several of the village's departments.

"Unlike the fire districts, our budget goes back to the taxpayers, and we have to be very frugal in our increases," said Babylon Village Mayor Ralph Scordino, whose department costs $55 per resident.

In general, though, both citizens and governments traditionally have taken a hands-off approach to fire departments, mindful that firefighters are active, organized and trusted members of their communities.

Recent thefts of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax money and donations from fire departments across Long Island -- $700,000 in Dix Hills, $208,000 in Bayville, $90,000 in Great Neck and $70,000 in Centereach -- went unnoticed for months or years, according to prosecutors. They often came to light by chance.

In Dix Hills, where charges against the former department treasurer are pending, the missing money was discovered only after checks from a Sept. 11 benefit fund bounced.

Taking on their own

Recently, volunteers themselves have started to speak out about spending.

In Manhasset, 45-year volunteer Brian Kenny bought full-page newspaper ads in 2003 arguing his department could be run more cheaply and reliably if it went paid.

In East Northport, former Suffolk fire commission member James McCormick has become the district's fiercest critic, lambasting the board over its purchase of a $7,590 granite conference table: "Have you no sense of moral responsibility to the taxpayers or is it just to satisfy your egos?"

In Bethpage, Hickey, before he died at age 47, repeatedly sought allies to get fire departments to drop territorial boundaries and share more responsibilities. As commissioner, he persuaded neighboring Levittown to team up with his district to speed response, but other agencies wouldn't go along.

"Nassau County ... will soon be called to judgment because of the cost of running the Volunteer Fire service," he wrote in an open letter seven years ago to a firefighter newspaper, Fire News. " ... The time is nearing for a change."

Some people Hickey had counted as friends stopped talking to him after that, his widow, Donna, said.

Today, it's almost impossible to travel around Bethpage and not run into a memorial to Brian Hickey, be it the post office, a road, a scholarship, the department's refurbished ladder truck or the block of polished stone outside the firehouse.

Donna Hickey appreciates the gestures because her husband loved being a volunteer. But she wishes they'd remember what he had to say about the volunteer system, too.

"If anything, I think these guys should be giving more for his ideals because they knew he was right," she said. " ... It just doesn't work anymore, and it hasn't worked in a long time."

Stacey Altherr was the principal researcher on this story; she was later joined by staff writers Tom McGinty and Eden Laikin and Mary Ellen Pereira.

Edited November 13, 2005 by FF402

[Guest]

Wow, not that anything in that article is all that shocking, but reading it on paper is kinda rough. People aren't going to volunteer for incentives, either you're going to do it because you want to, or you're not. Westchester might not have many 8 million dollar firehouses, but we have some SERIOUS fat to cut off. Westchester must have enough engines to rival NYC and that doesn't make any sense. In the long term, I think that the survival of the fire service, both volunteer and career, depends on restructuring and streamlining of resources. I hate to say the dreded word, but Consolodation of some kind is going to be the way in the end.

[cas2383 22]

I am sick of hearing all these negative things about volunteer departments, they always find a way to twist the facts or only show the facts that cna hurt, never is it saying as this article puts it 141 firemen/women who wake up middle of the night to answer a call for help. Instead of writing negativly about it why dont these authors do more to help and write articles to persuade people or at least open their eyes to volunteering.

[JohnnyOV 2]

I am sick of hearing all these negative things about volunteer departments,  they always find a way to twist the facts or only show the facts that cna hurt, never is it saying as this article puts it 141 firemen/women who wake up middle of the night to answer a call for help.  Instead of writing negativly about it why dont these authors do more to help and write articles to persuade people or at least open their eyes to volunteering.

←

Im all for volunteering, but that is being biased as well. Just the straight facts should be presented and nothing else. If the unfortunate truth comes out that LI Volunteers or Vollys anywhere else are abusing the system and not handleing things they way they should be, a change must be insued. Its not fair to the people that the companies are protecting to bias the information in either direction.

[ny10570 745]

Wow, not that anything in that article is all that shocking, but reading it on paper is kinda rough.  People aren't going to volunteer for incentives, either you're going to do it because you want to, or you're not.  Westchester might not have many 8 million dollar firehouses, but we have some SERIOUS fat to cut off.  Westchester must have enough engines to rival NYC and that doesn't make any sense.  In the long term, I think that the survival of the fire service, both volunteer and career, depends on restructuring and streamlining of resources.  I hate to say the dreded word, but Consolodation of some kind is going to be the way in the end.

←

Absolutely. And while we're at it why not look around and see what's around before buying up new equipment. Now nearly everyone has a tower, but if you need a stick for what ever reason, the pickings are slim.

[Guest BrotherFF]

How about accepting their are problems with the LI fire service, and these departments reconizing their is an issue that needs to be corrected??? I think this article is an eye opener.

Sure, it is kind of intense, but are they right? C'mon, you can't tell me that some of these expenditures aren't lavish. And they have more trucks then NYC and LA combined, with half the call volume and population...yet have higher response time???? And a granite conference table???

Edited November 14, 2005 by BrotherFF

[HFD23 37]

well all i have to see is the rest of the last 6 parts should be extremely eye opening and it seems they have done a ton of research. lets all wait and see what is to come before the typical vollie vs career issue starts up.

[firecapt32 282]

For all thoses interested go to www.newsday.com and read more its a 6 day piece on the vol service in L.I. with virtual tours of some of the stations. Is it that way here?? Look around you guys-- bigger is better even here in Westchester 960k for a tower ladder 650k for a rescue we arent far behind. whos minding the purse strings in L.I. most are Fire districts and as you know fire districts can set their own rate-- fire commisioners are gods in L.I.

[Jybehofd 85]

Its a good article but they seem to look at response times alot. Maybe they should have talked about the traffic in Long Island too. How Volunteers out there have the hardest time getting through it to the firehouse during the day. No one yelleds for them. I have some friends out there, it can take them 2 minutes to get to the firehouse after about 8pm but mid day almost 10 minutes to go the same distance?? I know that is one of the problems, they want volunteers to respond but what happens when your in traffic and the blue light just doen't help. I wonder if this could affect the times? any ideas about it?

[BIGRED1 71]

i was out there a while back for a funeral and afterward i got a tour with one of the chiefs. first off i could fit both engines and out ladder in their meeting room, not the banquet hall mind you, their meeting room. they had two bars, and a 5 bay garage plus one for doing work on the rigs. at one point i was in the resuce cause i have never seen the inside and just wanted to check it out. i picked up the TIC and was like oh this is cool. this is what he said to me " ya if you want that i could give it to you but i just need to wait for the money to come in for a new one." the thing was brand new, maybe 2 scratches on it. he was gonna just give it to me, no questions asked. he later on gave me 10 globe jackets and a couple of morning pride jackets cause they were two "old". the tag inside said 2003. and it was not that beat up. they also had the training room with the juice bar and they have the bars. i was like walking into a middle school. you know that feeling when you go in and there are trophys on the wall and awards. all new brick, and there are two flights of stairs. the chief office is like a school office. everyone has a personal office that is the size of most meeting rooms.

LI fire house too much, mmmm maybe a little.

[BIGRED1 71]

part 2 of the series

Fire alarm: The trucks

 

BY ELIZABETH MOORE

STAFF WRITER

November 15, 2005

It can carry four firefighters 95 feet into the air to pluck people from multistory buildings, and collapse cinder-block walls with the force of its 2,000-gallon-per-minute stream of water.

"Desire to serve," reads the decal on the door.

But in four years, Yaphank's 30-ton, 45-foot-long Pierce aerial platform ladder truck hasn't gotten much use.

Since its delivery in the spring of 2001, dispatch records show, the $700,000 truck has fought only two fires -- one in a pile of discarded wooden pallets this summer and the other at a junkyard in neighboring Medford two months ago. At the six house fires it has responded to, the truck stood with its 500-horsepower motor idling as firefighters went about their work by taking the stairs or climbing hand ladders.

"Knock on wood, but we haven't really needed it," said Chief Robert Walther, who pointed out that the truck is heavily loaded with hand ladders and lifesaving equipment that comes in handy at an emergency. "If that truck is not there, I'm short-handed ... Fortunately, I haven't had to use it 100 percent every day for everything that goes on, but without it, we're lost."

Long Island's 179 fire agencies have the best trucks money can buy, and plenty of them: more than New York City and the city and county of Los Angeles put together, which protect almost three times as much land and six times as many people and answer more than 12 times as many calls for help.

And because of Long Island's volunteer shortage, departments often have more trucks than they can fill.

"What I need is volunteers," Mike Carrucci, then a Deer Park fire commissioner, said before the district bought a new pumper four years ago. "We can't even get two trucks out, let alone four and five."

Privately, some officials say that shortage, and the decline in serious fires, mean their costliest trucks get more use in the fire department parades that roll down Main Street almost every weekend from spring to fall than they do in emergencies.

Most Long Island departments have more fire trucks than fires that need an engine and hose to put them out, records show. The newest trucks are so large they sometimes don't fit in the departments' own firehouses or down tight neighborhood streets.

And the abundance of top-flight fire equipment extends beyond engines and ladders.

Heavy rescue trucks with specialized tools to cut open wrecked cars and winch firefighters into collapsed spaces can cost $750,000 or more. The New York Fire Department owns one heavy rescue truck for each of its five boroughs, plus a single spare for use citywide. Long Island fire agencies own 139.

Long Island departments commonly provide their unpaid chiefs and each of their assistant chiefs with the use of sport-utility vehicles loaded with electronics. In larger districts there are often personal-use cars for supervisors and mechanics, buses for trips to the county fire academy, parades and funerals, and "district vehicles" used by commissioners.

Though the U.S. Coast Guard and police marine bureaus have primary responsibility for water rescues, fire agencies maintain 130 boats for that purpose. Lakeland owns a hovercraft; Centerport, a pair of Jet Skis; Wantagh, a $75,000 fireboat.

Premium apparatus

Fire districts also use tax money to house, maintain and insure a variety of vehicles not used in firefighting, such as antique fire trucks for parades and high-performance racing vehicles for their tournaments.

There also is no regional coordination of equipment purchases, and under state purchasing laws fire officials can pretty much pick out whatever they want: $30,000 worth of gold-leaf decorations, custom-built cabs for 10, and elaborate computerized controls.

Long Island volunteers enjoy a reputation as being well trained, well organized and well funded, said Les Adams, a Maryland-based fire consultant.

"They are known for buying the newest and the latest fire apparatus -- a lot of chrome -- and almost like money is no object," he said.

Long Island is a bright spot in a bleak national picture for fire truck sales, dealers say, as departments elsewhere consolidate to deal with dwindling volunteer numbers.

Fred Heffel, a career New York City fire marshal and former South Farmingdale fire commissioner, has never forgotten what a salesman for the Pierce Fire Apparatus Co. once told him during a visit to its plant in Wisconsin.

"There's $100,000 trucks, there's $200,000 trucks, there's $300,000 trucks," the salesman said, "and then there's Long Island fire trucks."

This appetite for premium apparatus goes a long way toward explaining surveys showing that Long Island's volunteer fire departments cost three times as much to operate as the average volunteer department in the Northeast.

Long Island's apparatus glut is an extreme example of a phenomenon common to volunteer fire departments in affluent suburbs across the country. When firefighting is administered at the community level rather than town or county, duplication of equipment often results, industry experts say.

Justifying the purchases

It's part of the reason Long Island's volunteer fire service, though cheaper per resident, costs more per call than the paid New York Fire Department. To local fire-service leaders, though, their equipment is a point of pride, not waste.

"They [New York City officials] don't buy the apparatus that we buy, and they don't pay the kind of bucks for their apparatus that we do because they don't put the options into their fire apparatus that the volunteers do," said William Swift, a Glenwood Landing volunteer trustee, a paid Syosset Fire District mechanic, a former chairman of the Nassau Fire Commission and a fire truck salesman.

"There are 20 things you won't find on a city rig but you'll find it on a Nassau County rig."

The Centereach Fire District spent $394,000 in 2003 for a new fire engine with a deck gun that can aim an industrial-strength blast of water by remote control.

North Massapequa recently paid $501,622 for a new Pierce pumper with a state-of-the-art system that uses compressed air to spray flame-smothering foam under the light of two 500-watt telescoping floodlights.

Melville owns two 3,000 gallon-per-minute pumpers that are 50 percent more powerful than anything in the arsenal of the FDNY. Yet no hydrant in the Melville district is capable of producing that much water.

To use the pumper at full capacity, multiple water lines must be tapped, Melville fire board chairman Salvatore Silvestri said.

Silvestri justified the purchases by pointing to Melville's tangle of office parks and warehouses.

"We're a mini-metropolis," he said.

Some frustrated volunteers see these purchases as overkill, pure and simple.

"Everything is ego-driven, everything is outdoing the Joneses," said a firefighter in the Village of Hempstead who didn't want his name used because he didn't want to make enemies. "They'll say, 'North Merrick got a new pumper? We have to top them. They got chrome rims? We want chrome rims with inlay.' "

For the most part, Long Island fire officials justify their vehicles by pointing to ever-stricter national fire equipment standards, a patchwork of voluntary guidelines and federal requirements that they say more affluent communities have no excuse to ignore.

The design of fire trucks is governed by standards of the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit technical advisory group.

A watershed 1987 decision by the NFPA required all fire trucks to have enclosed cabs because firefighter falls from the back of moving engines had been a leading cause of death in the line of duty.

The important safety advance drove spending for bigger, more expensive trucks nationwide.

The number of trucks each community should have is spelled out by the Insurance Services Office, a nationwide agency that helps insurance companies set fire insurance rates.

Under the standards, fire departments should have a pumper stationed within 1.5 miles of developed areas and a ladder truck within 2.5 miles of areas that have more than five warehouses, factories or buildings of at least three stories.

Duplication of equipment

Long Island departments enjoy much better ISO ratings than New York State or the nation as a whole, the agency said, but that has less to do with the number of fire trucks than with the fact that much of the region is served by fire hydrants with good water pressure.

Gregory Pittel, who rated Long Island fire agencies for ISO in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said many of the departments he visited had more equipment than they needed to meet standards.

"Out of every four fire departments that had a ladder , there was probably one that did not need it," to satisfy ISO standards, Pittel said.

Fire agencies could still earn good ISO ratings without buying as much equipment as standards call for, said Dennis Gage, chief of ISO's national rating program. Individual fire departments can do without certain pieces of equipment if a neighboring department is prepared to send that truck or pumper as specified in a formal mutual-aid plan.

Many Long Island departments have informal mutual-aid arrangements with their neighbors, but the kind of official commitments ISO has in mind, which require joint planning and training between departments, are uncommon here.

"Is there a duplication of equipment? Yeah, I'll be the first to say there is, but each district has to protect their own," said former Mastic Commissioner Charles Mineo. "Let's say Mastic had the only aerial [ladder truck] in the area and Brookhaven called us and, God forbid, Mastic had a fire at the same time and somebody died -- you'd say, 'What the heck are you doing in Brookhaven when you were supposed to be in Mastic?' "

As of September, Mastic's aerial truck has gone on 27 calls and was present at only two working fires since it went into service in 2002, according to county records.

Other fire officials counter that when a department sends its own equipment out of the district on a mutual-aid call, a third department is routinely called upon to provide backup.

Elmont fire officials maintain a spare ladder truck that they use at fires in other communities. That leaves Elmont's two other ladder trucks free to protect its own 5.7-square-mile district.

Decentralized approach

The smaller the community, the more duplication results from Long Island's decentralized approach to fire equipment, according to a Newsday survey of emergency data and department fleets.

The 36 smallest Long Island fire districts, measuring less than 2 square miles each, fought a total of 87 working fires in 2003, records show. They had 113 pumpers and ladder trucks to fight them.

Five of the agencies serving the smallest areas are clustered along the Queens border and cover six-tenths of a square mile altogether: Bellerose, Bellerose Terrace, Floral Park Centre, South Floral Park and Stewart Manor.

Those five agencies have 10 pumpers and a ladder truck among them and answered 422 fire calls in 2000 -- none of which required the use of a fire engine.

"I said, 'Do we need all these engines and their costs?'" said former Stewart Manor Chief Thomas Foley, who failed a decade ago in a bid to have the departments merge and is now volunteering in the Garden City Fire Department.

History and tradition play a strong role in how agency lines are drawn.

The Roslyn Fire Department covers its 11.7-square-mile area with two separate fire companies, an arrangement that dates back a century to when steamer engines were too heavy for horses to haul from the harborfront to the highlands. The companies, Rescue and Highlands, don't pool their heavy apparatus or coordinate purchases, officials said, leaving a community with a half-dozen fires to fight in the average year with four pumpers and four ladder trucks.

Last year, Rescue officials rebuffed an invitation to become part of Highlands, but talks are continuing.

"It's ridiculous," said John Ceriello, a longtime Highlands member who is a New York City fire lieutenant. Ceriello thinks departments should be consolidated under some kind of regional authority. "Because you don't have an overseer on the county level, on any regional level, there's no one to say, 'No, you can't do that.' "

East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz, whose village is served by both companies, said he has tried to persuade them to merge, so far with no success.

"I have offered to sit as a nonvoting member of their board to participate," he said, "and we were told we weren't welcome unless we joined the fire department."

James McCann, the Highlands president, is unapologetic.

"If you want to join, Mayor Koblenz, come on down." he said in an interview. "If you want to have some input, join. My people put me in to serve in their best interest."

Nationwide, stressed departments in growing areas have frequently turned to consolidation, and one of the first results has been the shedding of equipment, industry experts said.

Orange County, Calif., is an affluent suburban region of 1.2 million residents south of Los Angeles, with a mix of buildings and communities similar to Long Island's. The Orange County Fire Authority, a combination department of paid and volunteer firefighters, protects 516 square miles, an area 43 percent the size of Nassau and Suffolk counties. They do it with less than one-tenth the equipment: 81 engines, 14 ladder trucks and one heavy rescue truck, compared to 683 engines, 182 ladders and 139 heavy rescue trucks on Long Island.

"We're very fond of our fire engines," said Orange County Battalion Chief Scott Brown. "There is so much emotion around them, so much pride, it's the very reason there is an allure to this profession."

That pride was on display on a summer night on Long Island four years ago when Deer Park commissioners debated the need to replace a scarcely used 15-year-old pumper with a fancier one. Even their chiefs didn't think it was necessary.

"It's a waste to spend taxpayers' money foolishly," Thomas Richardson, a New York City battalion chief who had served as Deer Park's volunteer chief the year before, said at the meeting. To really help the community, commissioners should hire a fire inspector or more emergency medical technicians. "Of course we do not need four engines."

But the commissioners, saying the volunteers deserved the best equipment, voted 4-1 to go ahead with the purchase, choosing to go with the higher of two bids at $450,000.

"I would spend any amount of money we have to give them the right equipment to do the right job," said Anthony Macaluso, then the board chairman.

Stacey Altherr contributed to this story.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

Edited November 15, 2005 by ECLEMENTE

[Guest]

I hate to comment on this same topic again, but this pains me, it makes me sick. Nearly 700 on L.I. This pains me and I'm from Westchester!!! In my last dept, WAY upstate, we spent 400,000 on a PAIR of engines to to run first and second due to 500 alarms a year. Its called cutting out the fancy roto rays and air brushed murals. I'm embarrased for L.I.. I don't want to take away from all the hard work that the members do, I'm sure that they are indeed very dedicated, well trained, hard working and should have the very best equiptment, but there is a LARGE rift between the best equiptment to do the job and gross over kill. All of us in the fire service need to watch the bottom line and be sensible. It'll help us all get the things most important to us in the end.

[AndyC3J 190]

I find it a tad difficult to believe the numbers of apparatus (more than FDNY, LAFD, AND LACoFD combined!?!???......even with Chief's vehicles included, I think that may be a stretch) but there's no doubt that there's some serious money tied up in some of those rigs.

Nassau County companies are strange. Nearly every one has a "cookie cutter" Pierce engine. Late 80's or very early 90's Lance 10-man cab, flat roof, white over red. The next bay over has something that will blow your mind. Some more than others. I can see the viewpoint of it being a waste of money, but which would be worse, too many rigs, or not enough?

As discussed in the other thread, the manpower issue is the same no matter where you look, and will only get worse over time, as long as the cost of living keeps going up.

Just my $.02

[TRUCK6018 50]

I find it a tad difficult to believe the numbers of apparatus (more than FDNY, LAFD, AND LACoFD combined!?!???......even with Chief's vehicles included, I think that may be a stretch) but there's no doubt that there's some serious money tied up in some of those rigs. 

←

Is it that difficult to believe? I don't know where the numbers come from but just looking at the database glosery, aside from the engines, ladders, rescues, fireboats and ambulances, there is an average of 6 "other vehicles" within the various agencies.

Another catagory of apparatus that will exagerate the numbers is the number of antiques and racers that the departments maintain.

[Guest]

You would thing with all that money down there all the depts would be fully paid. Looks to me this article really puts the light ona dim vol system in LI. Now you bet the public will be showing up for public votes and so on. The depts seem to work on the jones system. Just trying to keep up with the jones...

Remember the two things that are killing volunteers everywhere???

PRIDE AND TRADITION

[JohnnyOV 2]

Part 4

BY ELIZABETH MOORE

STAFF WRITER

November 15, 2005

It can carry four firefighters 95 feet into the air to pluck people from multistory buildings, and collapse cinder-block walls with the force of its 2,000-gallon-per-minute stream of water.

"Desire to serve," reads the decal on the door.

But in four years, Yaphank's 30-ton, 45-foot-long Pierce aerial platform ladder truck hasn't gotten much use.

Since its delivery in the spring of 2001, dispatch records show, the $700,000 truck has fought only two fires -- one in a pile of discarded wooden pallets this summer and the other at a junkyard in neighboring Medford two months ago. At the six house fires it has responded to, the truck stood with its 500-horsepower motor idling as firefighters went about their work by taking the stairs or climbing hand ladders.

"Knock on wood, but we haven't really needed it," said Chief Robert Walther, who pointed out that the truck is heavily loaded with hand ladders and lifesaving equipment that comes in handy at an emergency. "If that truck is not there, I'm short-handed ... Fortunately, I haven't had to use it 100 percent every day for everything that goes on, but without it, we're lost."

Long Island's 179 fire agencies have the best trucks money can buy, and plenty of them: more than New York City and the city and county of Los Angeles put together, which protect almost three times as much land and six times as many people and answer more than 12 times as many calls for help.

And because of Long Island's volunteer shortage, departments often have more trucks than they can fill.

"What I need is volunteers," Mike Carrucci, then a Deer Park fire commissioner, said before the district bought a new pumper four years ago. "We can't even get two trucks out, let alone four and five."

Privately, some officials say that shortage, and the decline in serious fires, mean their costliest trucks get more use in the fire department parades that roll down Main Street almost every weekend from spring to fall than they do in emergencies.

Most Long Island departments have more fire trucks than fires that need an engine and hose to put them out, records show. The newest trucks are so large they sometimes don't fit in the departments' own firehouses or down tight neighborhood streets.

And the abundance of top-flight fire equipment extends beyond engines and ladders.

Heavy rescue trucks with specialized tools to cut open wrecked cars and winch firefighters into collapsed spaces can cost $750,000 or more. The New York Fire Department owns one heavy rescue truck for each of its five boroughs, plus a single spare for use citywide. Long Island fire agencies own 139.

Long Island departments commonly provide their unpaid chiefs and each of their assistant chiefs with the use of sport-utility vehicles loaded with electronics. In larger districts there are often personal-use cars for supervisors and mechanics, buses for trips to the county fire academy, parades and funerals, and "district vehicles" used by commissioners.

Though the U.S. Coast Guard and police marine bureaus have primary responsibility for water rescues, fire agencies maintain 130 boats for that purpose. Lakeland owns a hovercraft; Centerport, a pair of Jet Skis; Wantagh, a $75,000 fireboat.

Premium apparatus

Fire districts also use tax money to house, maintain and insure a variety of vehicles not used in firefighting, such as antique fire trucks for parades and high-performance racing vehicles for their tournaments.

There also is no regional coordination of equipment purchases, and under state purchasing laws fire officials can pretty much pick out whatever they want: $30,000 worth of gold-leaf decorations, custom-built cabs for 10, and elaborate computerized controls.

Long Island volunteers enjoy a reputation as being well trained, well organized and well funded, said Les Adams, a Maryland-based fire consultant.

"They are known for buying the newest and the latest fire apparatus -- a lot of chrome -- and almost like money is no object," he said.

Long Island is a bright spot in a bleak national picture for fire truck sales, dealers say, as departments elsewhere consolidate to deal with dwindling volunteer numbers.

Fred Heffel, a career New York City fire marshal and former South Farmingdale fire commissioner, has never forgotten what a salesman for the Pierce Fire Apparatus Co. once told him during a visit to its plant in Wisconsin.

"There's $100,000 trucks, there's $200,000 trucks, there's $300,000 trucks," the salesman said, "and then there's Long Island fire trucks."

This appetite for premium apparatus goes a long way toward explaining surveys showing that Long Island's volunteer fire departments cost three times as much to operate as the average volunteer department in the Northeast.

Long Island's apparatus glut is an extreme example of a phenomenon common to volunteer fire departments in affluent suburbs across the country. When firefighting is administered at the community level rather than town or county, duplication of equipment often results, industry experts say.

Justifying the purchases

It's part of the reason Long Island's volunteer fire service, though cheaper per resident, costs more per call than the paid New York Fire Department. To local fire-service leaders, though, their equipment is a point of pride, not waste.

"They [New York City officials] don't buy the apparatus that we buy, and they don't pay the kind of bucks for their apparatus that we do because they don't put the options into their fire apparatus that the volunteers do," said William Swift, a Glenwood Landing volunteer trustee, a paid Syosset Fire District mechanic, a former chairman of the Nassau Fire Commission and a fire truck salesman.

"There are 20 things you won't find on a city rig but you'll find it on a Nassau County rig."

The Centereach Fire District spent $394,000 in 2003 for a new fire engine with a deck gun that can aim an industrial-strength blast of water by remote control.

North Massapequa recently paid $501,622 for a new Pierce pumper with a state-of-the-art system that uses compressed air to spray flame-smothering foam under the light of two 500-watt telescoping floodlights.

Melville owns two 3,000 gallon-per-minute pumpers that are 50 percent more powerful than anything in the arsenal of the FDNY. Yet no hydrant in the Melville district is capable of producing that much water.

To use the pumper at full capacity, multiple water lines must be tapped, Melville fire board chairman Salvatore Silvestri said.

Silvestri justified the purchases by pointing to Melville's tangle of office parks and warehouses.

"We're a mini-metropolis," he said.

Some frustrated volunteers see these purchases as overkill, pure and simple.

"Everything is ego-driven, everything is outdoing the Joneses," said a firefighter in the Village of Hempstead who didn't want his name used because he didn't want to make enemies. "They'll say, 'North Merrick got a new pumper? We have to top them. They got chrome rims? We want chrome rims with inlay.' "

For the most part, Long Island fire officials justify their vehicles by pointing to ever-stricter national fire equipment standards, a patchwork of voluntary guidelines and federal requirements that they say more affluent communities have no excuse to ignore.

The design of fire trucks is governed by standards of the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit technical advisory group.

A watershed 1987 decision by the NFPA required all fire trucks to have enclosed cabs because firefighter falls from the back of moving engines had been a leading cause of death in the line of duty.

The important safety advance drove spending for bigger, more expensive trucks nationwide.

The number of trucks each community should have is spelled out by the Insurance Services Office, a nationwide agency that helps insurance companies set fire insurance rates.

Under the standards, fire departments should have a pumper stationed within 1.5 miles of developed areas and a ladder truck within 2.5 miles of areas that have more than five warehouses, factories or buildings of at least three stories.

Duplication of equipment

Long Island departments enjoy much better ISO ratings than New York State or the nation as a whole, the agency said, but that has less to do with the number of fire trucks than with the fact that much of the region is served by fire hydrants with good water pressure.

Gregory Pittel, who rated Long Island fire agencies for ISO in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said many of the departments he visited had more equipment than they needed to meet standards.

"Out of every four fire departments that had a ladder , there was probably one that did not need it," to satisfy ISO standards, Pittel said.

Fire agencies could still earn good ISO ratings without buying as much equipment as standards call for, said Dennis Gage, chief of ISO's national rating program. Individual fire departments can do without certain pieces of equipment if a neighboring department is prepared to send that truck or pumper as specified in a formal mutual-aid plan.

Many Long Island departments have informal mutual-aid arrangements with their neighbors, but the kind of official commitments ISO has in mind, which require joint planning and training between departments, are uncommon here.

"Is there a duplication of equipment? Yeah, I'll be the first to say there is, but each district has to protect their own," said former Mastic Commissioner Charles Mineo. "Let's say Mastic had the only aerial [ladder truck] in the area and Brookhaven called us and, God forbid, Mastic had a fire at the same time and somebody died -- you'd say, 'What the heck are you doing in Brookhaven when you were supposed to be in Mastic?' "

As of September, Mastic's aerial truck has gone on 27 calls and was present at only two working fires since it went into service in 2002, according to county records.

Other fire officials counter that when a department sends its own equipment out of the district on a mutual-aid call, a third department is routinely called upon to provide backup.

Elmont fire officials maintain a spare ladder truck that they use at fires in other communities. That leaves Elmont's two other ladder trucks free to protect its own 5.7-square-mile district.

Decentralized approach

The smaller the community, the more duplication results from Long Island's decentralized approach to fire equipment, according to a Newsday survey of emergency data and department fleets.

The 36 smallest Long Island fire districts, measuring less than 2 square miles each, fought a total of 87 working fires in 2003, records show. They had 113 pumpers and ladder trucks to fight them.

Five of the agencies serving the smallest areas are clustered along the Queens border and cover six-tenths of a square mile altogether: Bellerose, Bellerose Terrace, Floral Park Centre, South Floral Park and Stewart Manor.

Those five agencies have 10 pumpers and a ladder truck among them and answered 422 fire calls in 2000 -- none of which required the use of a fire engine.

"I said, 'Do we need all these engines and their costs?'" said former Stewart Manor Chief Thomas Foley, who failed a decade ago in a bid to have the departments merge and is now volunteering in the Garden City Fire Department.

History and tradition play a strong role in how agency lines are drawn.

The Roslyn Fire Department covers its 11.7-square-mile area with two separate fire companies, an arrangement that dates back a century to when steamer engines were too heavy for horses to haul from the harborfront to the highlands. The companies, Rescue and Highlands, don't pool their heavy apparatus or coordinate purchases, officials said, leaving a community with a half-dozen fires to fight in the average year with four pumpers and four ladder trucks.

Last year, Rescue officials rebuffed an invitation to become part of Highlands, but talks are continuing.

"It's ridiculous," said John Ceriello, a longtime Highlands member who is a New York City fire lieutenant. Ceriello thinks departments should be consolidated under some kind of regional authority. "Because you don't have an overseer on the county level, on any regional level, there's no one to say, 'No, you can't do that.' "

East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz, whose village is served by both companies, said he has tried to persuade them to merge, so far with no success.

"I have offered to sit as a nonvoting member of their board to participate," he said, "and we were told we weren't welcome unless we joined the fire department."

James McCann, the Highlands president, is unapologetic.

"If you want to join, Mayor Koblenz, come on down." he said in an interview. "If you want to have some input, join. My people put me in to serve in their best interest."

Nationwide, stressed departments in growing areas have frequently turned to consolidation, and one of the first results has been the shedding of equipment, industry experts said.

Orange County, Calif., is an affluent suburban region of 1.2 million residents south of Los Angeles, with a mix of buildings and communities similar to Long Island's. The Orange County Fire Authority, a combination department of paid and volunteer firefighters, protects 516 square miles, an area 43 percent the size of Nassau and Suffolk counties. They do it with less than one-tenth the equipment: 81 engines, 14 ladder trucks and one heavy rescue truck, compared to 683 engines, 182 ladders and 139 heavy rescue trucks on Long Island.

"We're very fond of our fire engines," said Orange County Battalion Chief Scott Brown. "There is so much emotion around them, so much pride, it's the very reason there is an allure to this profession."

That pride was on display on a summer night on Long Island four years ago when Deer Park commissioners debated the need to replace a scarcely used 15-year-old pumper with a fancier one. Even their chiefs didn't think it was necessary.

"It's a waste to spend taxpayers' money foolishly," Thomas Richardson, a New York City battalion chief who had served as Deer Park's volunteer chief the year before, said at the meeting. To really help the community, commissioners should hire a fire inspector or more emergency medical technicians. "Of course we do not need four engines."

But the commissioners, saying the volunteers deserved the best equipment, voted 4-1 to go ahead with the purchase, choosing to go with the higher of two bids at $450,000.

"I would spend any amount of money we have to give them the right equipment to do the right job," said Anthony Macaluso, then the board chairman.

Melville owns two 3,000 gallon-per-minute pumpers that are 50 percent more powerful than anything in the arsenal of the FDNY. Yet no hydrant in the Melville district is capable of producing that much water.

Its things like this that make me angry. Why would you spend tax payers money on things that wont even work to there full capacity in your own district?? Sure they might work full time outside there district, but honestly I dont see the need. Keep it low cost, but still at a benifit to the people your protecting.

Edited November 15, 2005 by EMSJunkie712

[BIGRED1 71]

i think the only real thing they should be spenting on in gear(ie. helmet, jacket, pants, etc.) top of the line gear that fits every guy or gal perfectly. and maybe top of the line SCBA's. thats where the money SHOULD be going. not to buying a new keg-o-lator for the fire house bathroom juice bar. if yuur gonna buy things make it stuff that can be used by everyone. it's great that they have 139 rescue trucks but does everyone know how to use the tools inside? are the majorety of the crew trianed rescue guys? most likely not. what will a chromed out siren bell do for the department? not as much as a brand new pair of boots.

i know i am kinda nit picking it but these are the things that are realy important

[KCRD 6]

In responce to Jybehofd's comment about vollie's spending time in traffic mid-day, that only further enhances the arguement of going to paid members. Instead of wasting ten minutes to get to the firehouse, that time is utilized getting to the scene. Whether paid or vollie, the most important thing is getting to the scene as fast as possible.

[HFD201 0]

I'm currently a student at Hofstra University in Hempstead. However, the University is in Uniondale's fire District as the firehouse is literally on campus, being just outside the back gate. Last night there was a call in one of the buildings and I don't believe Uniondale, mind you less than 30 secs. away even got a truck out. All that I saw were from Hempstead. You also hear the horns go off several times waiting for enough manpower to roll the rig. Something needs to be figured out whether it be going partially paid or something because something serious will happen one day due to long response time.

[BIGRED1 71]

two words: combonation department it works for pelham manor and pelham. we got the paid guys maning the rigs at all times. and if we have a worker and we need more people we can call other paid or combo depatments to come have some fun puting out the burning house.

[Guest]

QUESTION REGARDING WESTCHESTER FIRES SERVICE COST????

Can anyone tell me what the salary is for some of the career departments in westchester.. I know Yonkers is pretty high, but my friend has said that the smaller departments like Harrison, City of Rye,Port Chester, Town of mamaroneck, Larchmont.. in some instances make 6 figures.. Can anyone elaborate on this?

[firecapt32 282]

I cant help it I have to comment L.I. dosent meet New York State training standards. they have their own-. so it only seem to reason that they can do what ever they want as long as the taxpayers allow.

On that note most of Long Island is fire districts. Districts set their own rates.!. In fact they dont even need approval form the citizens to set that rate. the town just collects the money.

where are the state auditors!!!!!!

We in westchester better look around and see whats going on in our

communities. even here we think bigger is better. How much do department spend on dinners, Inspections. The law says that you have to have your department Inspected annually but dosent say you have to have a banquet following.

We have to keep in mind what we are in this business for--saving lives/and property. We have to put our egos at the door and do whats right for the citizens that we are supposed to be protecting. When that happens we will all be better firefighters.

[firebuff860 54]

As a volunteer and former chief, I am saddened by the LI presidents quote that he is in office to do what is in the best interests of his members period. Unless that is a misquote, I believe he is missing the big picture. While he should certainly have his members safety in mind and fight like hell for that, he should also be concerned with the overall best interests of the community he is serving, and paying for their apparent lavish lifestyle.

[ajsbear 11]

Levittown LI, a community with 17,000 1 1/2 story homes has not one but 2 ladders, ask them why and they say "just in case we go on mutual aid to the county medical center in East Meadow." They have 1 building over 2 floors in the entire district. a few commercial 1 story structures. Several years ago ithere was a fire in the police station next door to one of their 2 fire houses. They waited for Bethpage becasue it was not in Levitoowns district. On top of that, they spend more time training for the competition events than firefighting.

[JohnnyOV 2]

Whats really got me ticked off today, is how this reporter can write 3, 4 page articals on the downside of these volunteers, and 1, 1 page artical on the good side. I feel like ranting but ill save it for later, im in class.

[PC414 0]

Am I missing something? The point of these articles seems to be the flagrant misuse of $$$$$$$$$ ... LOTS of $$$$$$$$$$$. I don't see those who volunteer their time and effort being denigrated for the service they provide.

As you read these articles, do you honestly see criticism of the volunteers - the people - as they spend their time drilling, fighting fires or providing EMS? Where in these articles do you find a critique of how the JOB is done by those who volunteer?

Gotta' tell ya' - I just see some well-written stuff wondering if it's the sly, ol' fox who is actually watching the hen house. Where is the accountability with regard to the public trust? CRUISES for training? Hundreds of thousands of dollars for Inspection Dinners? Lincoln Town Cars when you rent instead of something a bit cheaper at those West Coast Conferences? Marble and granite fixtures? What the bloody ... ummm ... HECK does ANY of that have to do with being a well-trained, effective and safe department? Quite honestly, as a 21 year volunteer firefighter in Dutchess County, I'm embarassed to be seen in the same light as the excess which is portrayed.

If anyone's toes are being held in the fire in these articles, I'd suggest it's those of the Fire District Commissioners and others in positions of authority/responsibility who have apparently betrayed a public trust - at least as I understand it - in order to pursue a more self-serving private interest. The "beef" here isn't with the guy or gal volunteering on the hose line or in the back of an ambulance. It IS with out of control and excessive spending and an apparently grotesque lack of accountability about the way "business" is done.

Accountability and integrity isn't a bad thing in volunteer emergency services. As these articles clearly show, if those disciplines aren't

self-imposed and clearly evident in the way we conduct our activities, someone is going to notice and do something about it.

PC414

[X615 0]

the level of obscenity is off the scale. just because they haven't physically stolen the money & lined their own pockets doesn't make it any less wrong or obscene. there is no way any ethical, honest person could justify the 1000.00 custom tailored suits (uniforms), granite tops, 3 ladder trucks to cover a few sq. miles, disneyland suites, tiki bars, 130+ heavy rescue trucks, $400,000+ engines and so on. it's despicable & obscene and no way to een begin to justify it without selling ones integrity, honesty & soul. the misuse of taxpayer money here has to criminal besides being totally immoral, self serving, self indulgent and just plain gluttony. and to see the people confronted defend these practices so shamelessly and with so much arrogance is more disgusting than the waste of taxpayer money and speaks for itself that they have some perverted sense of entitlement and how dare they be questioned as to their actions or intentions. i come from a combo dept that did 2000+ calls a year with hand-me down turnout gear, 3rd & 4th generation old pagers, 30 year old ladder truck, 20 year old rescue, 20+ year old supply & reserve engines, almost 20 year old tanker, no chief's cars, no class a or dept supplied uniforms etc & the job got down just as well as on long island. we existed pretty much living hand to mouth & planning our purchases carefully and living within our unrealistically low budget. i'm anything but jealous of them, if anything i'm proud of what we did with what we had while i was a member there. i'd be ashamed & embarrassed if we had taken that kind of taxpayer money, blew it all on toys and can't get a machine or ambulance out the door. i loved working in a combo dept and having career drivers getting the first due engines out the door & later as an officer was comforted knowing not only was i getting 2 engines but drivers who were pretty damn good fireground officers as well. with the kind of money flowing into those dept it's irresponsible to not be hiring guys and evolving from a negligent volly dept into properly functioning combo dept that's able to properly respond when the taxpayers need them and if that means forgoing buying a $450,000 engine every couple of years or having one less $800,000 ladder truck so be it but at least the chiefs & commisioners will be able to sleep at night knowing they're providing legitimate fire protection & giving the people what they're paying for instead of criminally converting the money into luxury clubhouses packed with unused, useless toys. i could go on & on i'm so disgusted by this abuse but they apparently don't care so what's the use other than to vent and thank you for allowing me to do so.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

Levittown LI, a community with 17,000 1 1/2 story homes has not one but 2 ladders, ask them why and they say "just in case we go on mutual aid to the county medical center in East Meadow." They have 1 building over 2 floors in the entire district. a few commercial 1 story structures. Several years ago ithere was a fire in the police station next door to one of their 2 fire houses. They waited for Bethpage becasue it was not in Levitoowns district. On top of that, they spend more time training for the competition events than firefighting.

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Not true.....I worked for 3 years as a paid Dispatcher full time in Levittown, I have never heard anyone say that they have 2 ladders for mutual aid to Bethpage. They have more then 1 building over 2 stories...in fact they have a few 4 or 5 story buildings, multiple garden apartments, shopping malls, car dealerships ect...

The police station fire was more then several...maybe 15 0r 20 years...that is true but around 98 or 99 they entered into an automatic mutual aide procedure with Bethpage, where the closest stations will be alerted....a first on long island I admit and way over due.........they have 3 stations, and if i may say so...their "drill" team for competition was never that good....they did it for fun, and did not spend more time doing that. Their drill policy was more then most departments when I was there 4 sunday drills and 4 night drills during the week and u had to make 4 a month. Your info was way off.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

the level of obscenity is off the scale. just because they haven't physically stolen the money & lined their own pockets doesn't make it any less wrong or obscene. there is no way any ethical, honest person could justify the 1000.00 custom tailored suits (uniforms), granite tops, 3 ladder trucks to cover a few sq. miles, disneyland suites, tiki bars, 130+ heavy rescue trucks, $400,000+ engines and so on. it's despicable & obscene and no way to een begin to justify it without selling ones integrity, honesty & soul. the misuse of taxpayer money here has to criminal besides being totally immoral, self serving, self indulgent and just plain gluttony. and to see the people confronted defend these practices so shamelessly and with so much arrogance is more disgusting than the waste of taxpayer money and speaks for itself that they have some perverted sense of entitlement and how dare they be questioned as to their actions or intentions. i come from a combo dept that did 2000+ calls a year with hand-me down turnout gear, 3rd & 4th generation old pagers, 30 year old ladder truck, 20 year old rescue, 20+ year old supply & reserve engines, almost 20 year old tanker, no chief's cars, no class a or dept supplied uniforms etc & the job got down just as well as on long island. we existed pretty much living hand to mouth & planning our purchases carefully and living within our unrealistically low budget. i'm anything but jealous of them, if anything i'm proud of what we did with what we had while i was a member there. i'd be ashamed & embarrassed if we had taken that kind of taxpayer money, blew it all on toys and can't get a machine or ambulance out the door. i loved working in a combo dept and having career drivers getting the first due engines out the door & later as an officer was comforted knowing not only was i getting 2 engines but drivers who were pretty damn good fireground officers as well. with the kind of money flowing into those dept it's irresponsible to not be hiring guys and evolving from a negligent volly dept into properly functioning combo dept that's able to properly respond when the taxpayers need them and if that means forgoing buying a $450,000 engine every couple of years or having one less $800,000 ladder truck so be it but at least the chiefs & commisioners will be able to sleep at night knowing they're providing legitimate fire protection & giving the people what they're paying for instead of criminally converting the money into luxury clubhouses packed with unused, useless toys. i could go on & on i'm so disgusted by this abuse but they apparently don't care so what's the use other than to vent and thank you for allowing me to do so.

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All I will say is the Departments that have done the crazy spending are the minority, but to sell papers they must make that the headlines. Also some of the Firehouses they mention with pools and what not, are owned by the companies, they do all the upkeep and have to take care of the bills. If the members want to build a bar b que pit or put in a pool on their property whats wrong with that? The article is blowing it way out of proportion. You mean to tell me no Westchester Vollie houses have a club room or bar? Pool table, horseshoe pits? Large screen tv, gym, expensive ladder trucks that dont fit into exsiting firehouses? Be carful before you throw rocks. Dont get me wrong.....Im all in favor of the gross sepnding being controled better...but dont label all of LI like that.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

I'm currently a student at Hofstra University in Hempstead. However, the University is in Uniondale's fire District as the firehouse is literally  on campus, being just outside the back gate. Last night there was a call in one of the buildings and I don't believe Uniondale, mind you less than 30 secs. away even got a truck out. All that I saw were from Hempstead. You also hear the horns go off several times waiting for enough manpower to roll the rig. Something needs to be figured out whether it be going partially paid or something because something serious will happen one day due to long response time.

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Again this depends what time......Uniondale FDs procedure for certain alarms...like a report of an alarm ringing without a second source for fire is handled by Hofstra security and the Uniondale fire inspector during the day and a Chiefs call. So if you were looking for apparatus they may not have been alerted.