The firefighters union plans to sue City Hall to get rid of the centralized 911 call system — which they say has created dangerous delays, including to a towering Bronx fire yesterday.
A 911 call for the five-alarm blaze came in at 2:40 a.m., and because of human error was not relayed to the FDNY until 2:48 a.m. — allowing the inferno to go unchecked for an extra eight minutes, according to the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
When units arrived at 2:52 a.m., the blaze at 1507 Commonwealth Ave. was already raging. It left 25 people homeless, injured 11 firemen and left two children suffering smoke inhalation.
“The reason that this fire got out of control is that when we got there it was already out of control,” union president Steve Cassidy said.
“It was an eight minute and 22 second delay in the 911 dispatchers handing this off to the Fire Department.”
Cassidy said the union will seek an injunction to go back to the pre-2009 system.
Currently, callers to 911 only speak to an operator, who is then responsible for relaying the information — address, circumstances, etc. — to an FDNY dispatcher.
Under the previous system, callers would speak to a 911 operator and then get transferred to the FDNY dispatcher to directly relay the details.
Cassidy said the old system reduces the risk of human and computer error.
But city officials have said the current system saves time because the 911 caller doesn’t have to repeat the same information to two different people.
Officials said that the system worked just fine — and claimed that the FDNY responded faster than usual.
They claim that the 2:40 a.m. time stamp was for a previous call that the operator failed to delete from the screen, and that the call for the Bronx fire came in at 2:47 a.m.
“There’s a fire and I’m stuck in my room! I can’t get out!” a panicked woman is heard on a tape recording of the call.
The operator kept the woman on the line as he called the FDNY dispatcher about a minute later. The dispatcher had the key information by 2:48:57, police said.
It took less than five minutes from the time of the 911 call to when fire trucks were on the scene — faster than the ciry average of 5:01, Deputy Mayor Cas Halloway said.
“So it was a model response,” he said. The union’s version is “just totally not true,” he said.
Mayor Bloomberg took aim at the union head. “Steve Cassidy, I know him very well,” he said. “He’s a smart guy and he should be ashamed of himself for trying to create something that’s not true.”
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg and Kenneth Garger