For the largest American fire department in our largest city, these are, to use the famous Thomas Paine passage, “the times that try men’s souls.” Members of that department for at least two years have been under attack by their own mayor. Now the lid is off. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared open war against FDNY.
Firefighters working without a contract for three years, six fire stations closed down by the mayor, and reduction of staffing on engine companies-because firefighters were abusing sick leave, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said-were just a prelude to the insults to follow.
The setting is classic: A weak City Council. Control of the press. An unsympathetic non-fire service bureaucrat in Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. An antagonistic mayor. And the Darth Vader of New York City politics, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, known to insiders as “the co-mayor.” You couldn’t write a darker script.
For more than three years, Kelly has used the 9-11 murders and his influence with the mayor and powers beyond to expand the NYPD emergency response power base. That certain police services are duplicative and inferior to those provided by FDNY is inconsequential to his mayor-supported, divide-and-conquer machinations. The Kelly-Bloomberg version of “citywide integrated incident management”-the eeny-meeny-miny-mo equivalent of who’s the “lead agency” and who isn’t-should have been ridiculed and rebuked by the entire emergency response world for its complete failure to grasp the concept of unified command. Yet the Department of Homeland Security rubber-stamped it as meeting the criteria of NIMS. The naked emperor’s wearing beautiful clothes.
But the real plum in Kelly’s pudding was Bloomberg’s announcement that the NYPD would assume the lead management role in all haz-mat responses, under the official ruse that police are required to investigate potential terrorist incidents. With the NYPD’s shortcomings-if not outright ineptitude and unsafe practices-in haz-mat response having been documented and graphically illustrated on videotape, with its demonstrated top-down ignorance in the essence of a unified command system, and the sheer absurdity in giving greater weight to investigating a crime over immediate rescue and mitigation priorities, what could possibly possess the mayor to expose firefighters and the public to greater risk by subordinating FDNY chiefs in the command structure? It’s simple: Kelly’s controlling haz-mat response in New York City means controlling the federal terrorism response monies that flow into it.
Such times cry out for leadership. Too many times in similarly difficult political circumstances, we’ve fallen short. Not this time. At the lowest point for FDNY since 9-11, Fire Chief Peter Hayden carried 10,000 members on his shoulders.
With dignity and courage and what some in the press called “startling frank language,” Hayden testified at a highly charged City Council hearing in May against the haz-mat plan and in support of his firefighters, his fire officers, his city. The mayor had received bad advice, he said, and his plan “makes no sense,” endangering the public and his members. FDNY, Hayden testified, was best equipped to handle life safety priority in haz-mat situations and that, as quoted by The New York Times, “The agency … responsible for saving lives at a terrorist incident and for the rest of the city is not equally responsible for command …. This does not make sense …. Instead of seeking to control each other, agencies having major roles at terrorist events must learn how to work together to command these incidents …. There is a human behavior element here, where people don’t want to share information because information is viewed as power. We see it at every level of government. The CIA does not tell the FBI. The FBI does not tell the NYPD. The NYPD does not tell the FDNY,” the latter a reference to critical reports on 9-11 by NYPD helicopter units that the North Tower was in a state of imminent collapse, information never relayed to FDNY commanders.
After his testimony, Hayden was applauded by the firefighters in attendance. So what that the fire and police commissioners weren’t there to hear it? Their leaving before the fire chief spoke reveals volumes about their character and the mayor’s as well.
It takes great courage to put your job on the line. It takes great courage to stand up to a political tidal wave and take the beating you know will come. But Hayden had to do it-that’s what leadership is about. He lifted up 10,000 and more brothers and sisters that day. I’d bet he’d say they weren’t that heavy, either.
Chief Hayden didn’t win Bloomberg’s pointless war. He didn’t even win the battle. The mayor’s unrelenting open season on the New York City fire service continues, most recently in his discharging the fire commissioner to attack the fire unions. But New York City firefighters now know they have a leader with the courage to stand up for them in trying times-that they’re worth the fight, come what may. And the value in that should not be underestimated, for those who supply such a dangerous service or for those who receive it.
Here’s to the Chief Haydens of the fire service. May there be more like him to help pull the fire service through tough political times.
