Fewer people died in fires last here year than at any time since reliable record-keeping began in 1916, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
In the third of a series of recent good-news announcements, the mayor reported that 58 civilians perished as a result of fires in 2012, below the previous low of 62 set in 2010. The high of 310 was set in 1970. The Fire Department responded to structural fires in 4 minutes and 4 seconds, fourth fastest of Bloomberg’s tenure.
Ambulances got to life-threatening emergencies in an average six minutes, 30 seconds, another new low, despite a record 1.3 million calls. An unprecedented 5,681 of those calls were logged on a single day during Hurricane Sandy.
“It is really quite amazing,” the mayor told a packed audience at an FDNY promotion ceremony on Randalls Island.
Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano said average response times for structural fires would be have been two seconds faster if Sandy hadn’t intervened.
“That’s a significant amount for a three-day storm,” he observed of the two-second change.
Bloomberg has been rolling out one set of upbeat figures after another as he begins his final year in office. In the last few days, he has trumpeted a record low murder rate and a record number of 52 million tourists in 2012.
The mayor pointed out that the number of fire deaths has fallen below 100 only a dozen times in modern city history.
“Nine were in the last 11 years,” he boasted, referring to the period he’s been in office.