Fire this incompetent! Before it’s too late!
The next time you’re trapped in a burning building, thank your lucky stars if the person coming to your rescue is not slow-moving, accident-prone firefighter Wendy Tapia.
Tapia, 31, is the woman who, as The Post’s Susan Edelman reported, was given chance after chance — five in all — to pass a running test that ordinary fire-fighting candidates must master on the first try.
And even after she failed — first claiming a fractured foot, then a respiratory infection (a source told me she complained about bad weather) — Tapia was graduated from the city’s Fire Academy on Randall’s Island. Now her nervous brothers and sisters with the Fire Department of New York are bracing for more.
“A precedent has been set,’’ a management source inside the academy told me. “Now you can graduate without passing.”
“Who’s to say that anyone else following doesn’t have to pass a test?’’
At a time when the FDNY is determined to move past its image as a bastion of white males, firefighters worry that physical wrecks will be welcomed with open arms, provided they’re of the correct gender.
“She’s risk, she’s a liability — not only to herself but to the guys she works with and to the public,’’ one firefighter told me.
On Dec. 2, Tapia, who has yet to work a shift in her Queens firehouse, will attempt to run 1½ miles in 12 minutes or less — for a sixth time.
Meanwhile, the FDNY defends the former emergency medical technician, one of only 35 women on a force that numbers nearly 11,000. But rather than blame the physical limitations faced by the vast majority of females, a Fire Department spokesman blamed Tapia’s failures . . . on a hair-pulling chick fight!
FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon told me that he has heard that another female cadet tattled on Tapia.
“I can only believe this is our own version of a catfight,’’ he said. Yow!
The notion of the FDNY devolving into a clawing den of jealous felines did not sit well with uniformed men and women.
“We’re not saying, ‘Don’t hire women,’ ” said Paul Mannix, deputy chief of Division 6 in The Bronx — who spoke as a representative of Merit Matters, an organization dedicated to true equality.
“It’s like our worst fears are coming to fruition,’’ said Mannix. “The preferential treatment is the norm.’’
Currently, the FDNY is under a court order to recruit minority candidates.
Gribbon said the vast majority of Tapia’s failures occurred during her 18 weeks of training, which, he said, don’t count. Before graduating from the academy in May, she failed another running test. But Tapia immediately went on disability leave for a stress fracture in her foot, and graduated with her class anyway.
On Oct. 31, Tapia again failed the test — running at a personal best of 12 minutes, 23 seconds, still too slow.
That was when the president of the United Women Firefighters, a group of current and retired female smoke-eaters, sent an e-mail to Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano on Tapia’s behalf, revealing that the hapless woman suffered from a respiratory infection, which she had kept secret.
She’s getting yet another chance.
My Fire Academy source contends that Tapia failed the running test at least five times — or more. Usually, she ran the mile and a half at 12 minutes and 42 or 46 seconds. Once, he said, she blamed “inclement weather.’’
The president of the female firefighters’ group, Sarinya Srisakul, contends that Tapia got no special treatment.
“The Fire Department by law accommodates those who have been injured while on duty and this is extended to the training academy,’’ she wrote me in an e-mail. “I am concerned about the number of women and their treatment in the FDNY, but the specific situation you reported on is not about gender.’’
That’s news.
“You get one chance,’’ a firefighter said. Until now, that is.
Tapia did not respond to several requests for comment.
Will the FDNY rid itself of this problem? Or are we destined to be protected by people incapable of doing the job?
I fear for this city.
Keep Alec on air & out of our hair!
Alec Baldwin was suspended from two episodes of his low-rated MSNBC talk show, “Up Late with Alec Baldwin,’’ after he hurled anti-gay slurs at a Post photographer. Now honchos at the cable news network would be glad to see the door close on Alec’s backside, The Post’s Emily Smith reports.
The Bloviator came to work only an hour a week to prep for his show, shouted at staff, and demanded a humidifier to moisten his voice, sources said. (An MSNBC rep says Alec works long hours.)
Don’t cancel this show! I fear what will happen if Alec is cut loose with nothing to do.
Save ‘Puff’ Baby
Mayor Bloomberg — help!
Indonesia’s chain-smoking baby, Ardi Rizal, has kicked a 40-cigarette-a-day habit he picked up at age 2 — replacing coffin nails with a diet of junk food and condensed milk, documentary filmmakers discovered.
Now 5, Ardi tips the scales at an unhealthy 56 pounds.
His parents might consider shipping the child to New York, where the mayor has signed a law raising the legal age for buying smokes from 18 to 21, and fatty snacks are treated like contraband in school.
This tot needs a serious nanny.
Moxley murder will probably never be solved
We may never know who killed Martha Moxley.
After spending nearly 12 years behind bars for murdering Moxley in 1975, Michael Skakel, nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, was released Thursday on $1.2 million bail.
Now Skakel, who denies bludgeoning the girl with a golf club, is to get a new trial, after a judge ruled his lawyer did a rotten job defending him.
I believe Skakel will remain free.
Skakel and Moxley were only 15 when her body was found in tony Greenwich, Conn. Skakel, now 53, was convicted of murder 27 years later, in 2002, after former friends claimed he confessed to the grisly crime. At the time, I thought — that’s it?
A man should not be thrown in prison just because he has a rich, prominent extended family. I feel badly for the dead girl’s kin.
This sad, cold case may remain a mystery forever.
Scary to be frisk-averse
Be careful. Since Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled in August that the NYPD practice of stop, question and frisk amounted to illegal “indirect racial profiling,’’ cops have seized fewer guns.
“Her ruling has made a lot of officers gun-shy about getting guns off the street,’’ one lawman told The Post. “They don’t want to get sued.”
In the three months ending Nov. 3, police seized 634 weapons, down from 723 a year earlier. Shootings are up, to 312 from 305. Alarmingly, 367 people were hit by bullets — up from 355 folks who got shot the previous year.
This, even after an appeals court panel removed Scheindlin from stop-and-frisk cases, and blocked her decisions.
The city’s bad old days are on the rebound.