The Uniformed Firefighters Association has released what it's calling a "bombshell analysis" challenging the FDNY's response time statistics. The union accuses the fire department of "significantly underreporting average response times to fires and other emergencies, in some cases by up to 92 percent."
Here are some of the UFA's findings:
Actual response times to structural fires citywide in 2015 was 20 percent longer than what the city advertises; 57 percent longer for non-fire emergencies such as gas leaks, buildings collapses, explosions and other disasters; and a whopping 81 percent longer for medical emergencies.
In individual boroughs, many of the numbers were even starker: Non-fire emergency responses were 49 percent longer than what the city spotlights in Manhattan and 60 percent longer in Brooklyn. Those suffering medical emergencies waited 85 percent longer than what is advertised in Brooklyn and 92 percent longer in the Bronx...
The city promotes the average response time to structural fires as 4:11, below the nationally accepted standard of five minutes or less. In reality, that time is 5:00 citywide for structural fires. For non-structural fires, the actual citywide response time is 6:03, compared with the highlighted 4:30, and for medical emergencies it is 8:11, compared with the reported figure of 4:31.
Why the apparent discrepancy? The UFA says it's because the city hasn't been including the time that the 911 caller is on the phone with an operator, which can be minutes.
UFA President Steve Cassidy said, "The numbers the city reports paint a devastatingly inaccurate picture of how long it truly takes for New York City Firefighters to arrive at the scene of an emergency, when measured from the 9-11 call to the arrival of the first unit at the curb outside the affected building. If you are trapped in a fire or having a heart attack, those crucial seconds and even minutes of extra waiting can mean the difference between life and death. Every second a fire spreads makes it more dangerous for firefighters and the citizens we are sworn to protect."
Further, the UFA says with the boom in construction and new skyscrapers, first responders face inevitably longer response times due to structures' ever-increasing heights. "In a vertical city such as New York, is a measurement of call to curb sufficient?" Cassidy asked. "The city needs to factor emergency response coverage into all future zoning and development plans, so further growth is not putting the people who live and work in this city at greater risk.”
The union also says 2015 was the FDNY's busiest year, responding to 581,981 calls, which is 12% higher than 2014 and 21% over 2013. The NY Post, of course, blames the FDNY response times on bike lanes and pedestrian plazas.
Update: The FDNY responded, “There is nothing misleading about the city’s transparent and detailed reporting on response times for emergencies, broken down by seven different categories to account for each component in what is known as ‘end-to-end’ response time," and points to its reporting on 911 calls.
