Most fire engine companies in New York City had a fifth person until 2011, when that role was reduced to help balance the city’s budget in response to the financial crisis.
Advocates and firefighters have been pushing for restored staffing levels, saying it’s a matter of firefighter safety — and public safety.
On Monday, FDNY firefighters and advocates gathered to demand the city add a fifth firefighter to 86 engine companies working in some of the busiest parts of the five boroughs.
“We need as many trained hands as humanly possible on scene as fast as possible,” FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Brosi, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said at the rally.
“This is a public safety initiative, as the population increases, as we move more vertically in the city, as the mass casualty incidents seem to increase on a daily basis,” Brosi added.
Currently, only 20 of the nearly 200 engine companies have a fifth crew member. According to City Council Speaker Julie Menin, securing funding for a fifth firefighter is one of the council’s top priorities.
Menin says she supports having one extra firefighter to provide support to crews on the ground.
“This increase in funding would serve to prioritize deployment in the neighborhoods most impacted by structural fires and fire-related fatalities, where the difference between life and death can be literally just seconds,” the speaker said.
So far this year, there have been 30 fatal fires across the city. Fire deaths are up 60% compared with the same time period last year.
Haji Dukuray lost five of his family members in the Twin Parks high-rise fire in the Bronx in 2022.
“I was just wishing to myself, if only there [were] an additional firefighter. I mean, possibly, I would not have lost five members of my family [ranging in] age 49 to age 5. They had their futures in front of them,” Dukuray said.
The Twin Parks fire, one of the worst in the city’s history, killed 17 people.
Andrew Ansbro, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, which represents 20,000 active and retired New York City firefighters, says he believes an extra firefighter could have saved lives that morning.
“There is no question the water would have gotten on the fire faster. There would have been less fire, less heat and less deadly smoke,” he said. “Also, additional engine firefighters that would have arrived on the remaining alarms would have been able to remove victims that were trapped in the stairwells.”
Ansbro also says the FDNY could staff the engine companies with a fifth firefighter immediately, but there would be a need to ramp up hiring efforts later on.
