Chief Leader – February 10, 2015
by SARAH DORSEY
At a State Senate hearing marked more by disputes over the use of force by police officers, fire and Emergency Medical Service unions Feb. 4 also called for better protection for their members.
Uniformed Firefighters Association President Stephen Cassidy, speaking at the day-long hearing in downtown Manhattan, called for better enforcement of city building codes that protect firefighters.
A Secret Firetrap
The FDNY just marked the 10-year anniversary of the Black Sunday fire, a Bronx apartment blaze that killed two firefighters forced to jump to their deaths from the fourth floor. (Another died years later from a tragic accident related to injuries he had sustained.)
Unbeknownst to the firefighters, the apartment building had been illegally subdivided into single-room occupancy dwellings (SROs), secretly partitioned by walls covered in sheetrock. The apartments lacked sprinklers and each unit was padlocked by the residents.
The illegal setup delayed the firefighters from discovering the blaze and hindered their search for survivors. They became trapped and couldn’t reach the fire escapes before they were forced to jump.
Mr. Cassidy estimated that there are as many as 100,000 illegally-partitioned SROs in the city, but only about 1,200 “vacate orders” are issued annually. Fines for the violation range as high as $25,000 for repeat offenders. But according to a 2012 Mayor’s report, the previous year less than half of buildings hit with complaints about illegal conversions were actually inspected.
‘Festered Too Long’
“If cracking down to get rid of such illegal and dehumanizing housing inventory is not a priority of each and every administration in City Hall, then unscrupulous landlords are empowered,” Mr. Cassidy testified. “…So this is a problem that has festered for too long.”
Mr. Cassidy also called again for better disability payments for his newest members. Those hired after 2010 are eligible for as little as $27 a day if they’re forced to retire with job-related injuries.
The disparity was triggered in 2009, when then-Gov. David Paterson vetoed a bill, passed routinely since 1976, that extended Tier 2 pension benefits to newly-hired cops and firefighters. Under that law, they were eligible for tax-free disability pensions worth 75 percent of final average salary.
The 1,400 firefighters hired since then, along with thousands of newer police officers, if permanently disabled would receive just half their final average salary minus half of all Social Security disability benefits they earn. And the payments are taxable.
Not Worth the Risk
“Please ask yourself: would you risk your life and health for $27 a day? Could you afford to live, raise a family, while permanently disabled on that budget? I think not,” Mr. Cassidy said. He noted that many firefighters are still retiring from Sept. 11-related illnesses.
It’s up to the City Council, however, to take the next step to bring newer members up to parity with other firefighters. In order for lawmakers in Albany to act, they need a home-rule message from the city. Mayor de Blasio indicated last summer that he believed the measure would be too expensive, though more recently he’s expressed a willingness to reconsider the issue.
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