FDNY: Picking Calls
Tucker gets the VIP treatment?
Sources say FDNY’s new Fire Commissioner Robert S. Tucker recently got a front row view into how the boy’s club really operates as he dined near his upper east-side home.
In the restaurant a fellow diner apparently suffered a medical emergency.
Was Tucker, who made the 911 call, expecting some quick assistance especially as a firehouse is nearby?
If so, he was sorely disappointed as the first to arrive was an ambulance some 13 minutes later.
Curious about the response (or lack of it) it’s said he walked to the quarters of 22 Engine/13 Truck/Battalion 10 at 159 East 85th street.
Apparently finding the watch desk unattended, he found the crew in the kitchen eating dinner.
It’s reported that the engine company was dispatched for the medical emergency but blew it off assuming it was for a homeless person in the area.
Perhaps the homeless don’t make the cut, especially at dinnertime.
Recent Department Orders show five members of 22 Engine and a Chief being reassigned.
Tucker may be finding out that FDNY is a city within a city, each battalion a village and each fire station a cozy clubhouse where the rules are set and enforced not by senior leaders but by first-line officers and their chiefs who go along to get along.
Was it an isolated incident? Apparently not. The Department is hidebound to an astonishing degree and the accepted culture is absolute deference to the status quo, so what works in Yorkville probably plays in Queens too.
Tucker was (is?) a New York fire buff and buffs are legendary for their epic nostalgia right back to the smell of cinders wafting in the evening air as the steamer thunders down the avenue. The idea of him being an agent of change borders on the absurd.
But if he is, he has a heavy lift as change begins with ethical and moral responsibility and there appears to be a shortage.
It’s ironic that many U.S. firefighters consider FDNY to be the Mecca of the fire service, often emulating them in ways both large and small.
How bitter the disappointment then (it’s hoped) if the Apple’s bravest can’t be bothered to push back from the dinner table as a life hangs in the balance.
The FDNY “persona” is built upon imagery recalling selfless acts of courage and sacrifice.
Such behavior contradicts the legacy of 9/11 and suggests that self-interest is the defining motivation.
Be careful whom you worship.
