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Fire Alarm Day 1: The cost

The Jericho Fire Department was chronically short of firefighters -- so short, it had to elect a chief who lived in a different community, stretched its membership rules to take 17-year-olds and send its building custodians out on fire and rescue calls. The solution? Build a new 33,200-square-foot headquarters with a gym, sun deck, sauna and library that commissioners hope will attract new volunteers and entice more of the members to hang around the firehouse for calls. The $11 million, three-story building now is going up on Route 106/107, across the street from the current 24,000-square-foot headquarters, which, while it could use a new roof and fixtures, also has a spacious bar and recreation room, meeting hall large enough to host hundreds of guests, and four truck bays filled with state-of-the-art equipment. "The board is hopeful that these improvements will translate into improved response times," according to a statement by <a href="/topics/Jericho2">Jericho</a>'s elected commissioners when the building was approved. The old one will serve as a maintenance building. Many neighborhood residents say the new building is too tall and too big for the lot, and records show that if it were not a firehouse, it would violate town zoning laws. The residents say that the district made it difficult for them to gather details about the new building. "I'm the first to say, 'Go for it,' if it is going to save lives," said Doreen Leibowitz, whose backyard abuts the site. "But why does it have to be this humongous thing?" Building boom For more than 15 years -- in <a href="/topics/Jericho%2C_NY">Jericho</a>, <a href="/topics/Hicksville%2C_NY">Hicksville</a>, <a href="/topics/Coram%2C_NY">Coram</a>, <a href="/topics/Miller_Place%2C_NY">Miller Place</a> and dozens of communities in between -- a building boom has swept <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> fire agencies. Whether in good economic times or bad, the supersizing of <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a> firehouses has continued unabated. Since 1995, new headquarters have been built in at least 10 Long Island communities. Fire headquarters have undergone dramatic expansions in at least 40 other places, frequently doubling the size of the buildings. <a href="/topics/Medford%2C_NY">Medford</a> replaced its 8,000-square-foot headquarters with one that has more than 30,000 square feet; <a href="/topics/North_Patchogue%2C_NY">North Patchogue</a> traded up from 9,000 to more than 26,000; and <a href="/topics/Garden_City_Park%2C_NY">Garden City Park</a> is now replacing its 6,500-square-foot main firehouse with one that measures 24,500. At least a dozen new substations and 15 buildings for administration, training, dispatch and other functions have been built. Another 18 substation expansions are under way or recently completed, and dozens of other building projects are in the planning stages. There are now 386 fire stations and 104 other fire-related buildings on Long Island. And the cost of projects is rising quickly. The $3.8 million borrowed by the <a href="/topics/Greenlawn%2C_NY">Greenlawn</a> Fire District in 1994 to rebuild its headquarters was then the largest bond floated by any fire district in the state. Thursday, <a href="/topics/Setauket%2C_NY">Setauket</a> fire officials are asking voters to support a $17.5 million bond issue to replace their 14,436-square-foot headquarters with a new one that will be more than twice as big at 38,000 square feet. "The general rule of anything in the fire service is that things tend to get bigger over time," said Charles Jennings, a former volunteer firefighter who teaches fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "There is some uniqueness to Long Island in terms of the sheer scope and magnitude and size of the facilities. Everything is a little bigger on Long Island." Newer firehouses often come with hotel-sized kitchens with walk-in refrigerators, gyms, locker rooms and oak-paneled lounges with open-tap bars, big-screen televisions, pool tables, pinball machines and video games. Some fire officials acknowledge they are using the one resource they have plenty of -- money -- to keep their members happy at the firehouse and to bring in new volunteers. "If you want to take a horse and carriage, you've got to feed the horse a little something," said Hicksville Commissioner Robert Dwyer, explaining to residents in 2003 why his district wants to expand one substation's bar area, gym and meeting rooms at a cost now estimated at $5.2 million. He said it didn't measure up to the district's other substations. "Actually, I'm embarrassed," he said. "We think the Ronald Avenue station should look as nice as the others." Supersizing skepticism Jennings is skeptical of the value of buildings in recruiting and retaining members. "Has anybody done any study to show that if we build a Trump Tower and call it a fire station headquarters, that it's going to suddenly attract 25 reliable members?" Jennings asked. " ... I think the answer is no." Since the late 1980s, fire officials have also generally cited tougher occupational and safety standards, fire-truck safety mandates, physical fitness requirements and even the Americans with Disabilities Act as justifications for new building projects. By last fall, Dwyer's explanation of the need for the substation project had shifted after angry residents ousted an incumbent commissioner. "It has to be renovated. Federal law states you have to have a safe environment to work in," Dwyer told a civic association meeting last year. "Fortunately, we have not been cited by OSHA. No one has dropped a dime to say, 'Come down here and look.' Because anybody knows if you work in an industry and OSHA comes in, you're mandated to correct those problems." But a closer look at such mandates makes clear that none require building projects on the scale Long Island agencies have chosen. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has no rules for the space between trucks, and the disabilities act only requires that handicapped-access improvements are necessary when buildings are already being renovated for other reasons, according to federal officials. When Dwyer was contacted after the public meeting, he wasn't able to point to any violations. Fire officials most often point to a 1987 national safety standard requiring firefighters to ride in enclosed cabs, which they say has forced them to buy a new generation of trucks too big to fit in the old firehouses. "Now, most trucks have to be able to carry 10 men in a cab," Frank Relf, a leading Long Island firehouse architect, told West Islip residents at one public meeting. "A ladder truck by the time it's done will fit out at 12 feet, 6 inches high unless it's custom-designed." Most Long Island fire trucks, though, are already custom-designed. Babylon's new aerial platform ladder, the biggest type of fire truck, is just 10 feet high because the village issued bidding specifications requiring that it be able to back into the 79-year-old firehouse bay at village hall "without any modifications to the building's structure." "There are many different models you can pick from," one national sales representative said. "The long and short of it is, we build custom fire apparatus to fit in your garage and to fit your needs." And the 10-person cabs Relf mentioned are not mandated. "The only time I see 10 guys in a cab is at a parade or if the alarm rings during a department meeting," said Robert Galione, a New York City firefighter and former Lakeland commissioner. 'Awful lot of fluff' When buildings are expanded to accommodate larger trucks, fire districts also often add meeting and recreational space on floors above the bays. And in at least 38 communities, members may use those facilities for private parties, but residents may not. West Islip's failed attempt at a $6 million expansion in 2003 was spurred by complaints from firefighters about overcrowding and exhaust fumes around the trucks. By the time plans were finalized, an entire second floor, complete with offices, training rooms and a new gym, was on the drawing board. "There's an awful lot of fluff in this proposal," said Ronald Bova, former chairman of the West Islip school board and an anti-tax activist. Fire commission Chairman Kevin Shaughnessy conceded that the district hadn't pressed for cheaper alternatives, but said the amount of money the building would cost taxpayers was insignificant compared with recent local school and library bonds. "Most volunteer firemen aren't the best business people, and we're not usually the smartest people on the planet," he said. "But we do it for free." Residents who oppose building projects face a daunting task. Fire commissioners have considerable legal powers -- they can raise taxes and take property through condemnation. Laws and local zoning practices give residents little voice in construction decisions. And the obscurity of the fire districts themselves, as well as the arcane rules that govern them, keep opponents in the dark about building plans and what they can do to fight them. Benefit of the doubt Since 1988, state courts ruled that local governments should balance a fire district's right to immunity from zoning laws with a project's impact on residents. But towns routinely give fire agencies the benefit of the doubt. For instance, Jericho's $11 million headquarters proposal was approved without debate by Oyster Bay Town in October 2002. The town didn't notify residents of the meeting, either, even though opponents had asked to be able to comment because they said the building would exceed town height and lot coverage restrictions, duplicate the basic facilities at the present firehouse across the street and lack adequate parking. A town spokeswoman said there was no need to notify neighbors because the approval was automatic. Despite the 1988 decision, Oyster Bay's town code exempts fire district projects from zoning rules and public hearing requirements. No one has yet challenged the code in court. After watching the town approve the Jericho project, Hicksville commissioners facing better organized and persistent opposition to their substation expansion plans were reassured. "The town can delay the process," according to minutes from a 2003 commission meeting, "but it cannot stop us from doing what we want." The commission approved the project and is awaiting a building permit from the town. When it comes to paying for building projects, fire districts have two options: They can salt away tax dollars, or they can ask for the public's permission to borrow the needed millions in a bond issue. By piling up multimillion-dollar building accounts over several years, fire districts can avoid votes on borrowing entirely. State law does not limit the amount fire districts can set aside in these reserve accounts, and their annual reports to the state comptroller indicate they prefer this route. By the end of 2003, Nassau and Suffolk fire districts had amassed $182 million in reserve accounts, compared with only $77 million in bond debt. Tough to contest plans When districts want to spend the building reserve money, they vote at open meetings that are poorly publicized and poorly attended. It is then announced in the legal notices that appear in small type in the back of the local newspaper. The process is called "permissive referendum." The only way taxpayers can actually vote, though, is if they file a petition signed by residents who own 25 percent of the assessed valuation of taxable property in the district within 30 days of the publication of the legal notice. "If you look at the level of proof that you would have to submit ... somebody's got to research deeds and get information on assessed values," said Joe Frank, an attorney who represents both the Hicksville and Jericho fire districts. "It's a very complicated process." Lawyers for fire districts said they knew of no case where a petition drive had succeeded in forcing a vote. "You put it once in your legals, and who the hell is watching?" said an attorney for one Suffolk town who declined to be identified because he did not want to antagonize the volunteers. "By the time ... realize it, the building goes up, and they say, 'How did that get there?'" During all the debate over the Jericho Fire District's new headquarters, Leibowitz and her civic group weren't aware that they could try to force a vote. When residents asked at a public meeting how they could stop the project, a commissioner never answered the question. "It's a lost cause ... they're getting what they want," Leibowitz said after the town had approved the project. "If you need this thing, then be up front and tell us what's going on. The secrecy involved was unbearable. Why is it so difficult to get information from them?" District Secretary Marge Blais said the district had always been forthright and open in dealing with residents and their requests for information. She said the only time the district had balked at turning over records was when residents had asked for costly duplication of architectural drawings and weren't willing to pay the full cost of copying. Hidden surpluses When districts are planning projects, it can be hard for residents to determine just how much commissioners are setting aside for construction. While the building reserve accounts and the money earmarked for them are clear in budgets each year, some districts may actually be putting more money away than their budgets indicate. The way state law works, affluent districts can raise much more money in a year than they will actually need for expenses, leaving large operating surpluses that can then be diverted to building projects without public notice. In one five-year period, Jericho ran surpluses of 42 percent, 31 percent, 11 percent, 14 percent and 16 percent, documents show. That extra $2.4 million was added to the $4.5 million they had already budgeted for the building reserve fund over that same time period. By 2002, Jericho had banked $12.7 million in this manner. Fire officials defend the practice as prudent budgeting that saves on interest costs. Others are sharply critical. "I feel this way about surplus revenues: It is wrong," said State Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), a strong supporter in the Legislature of Long Island fire districts. "That money should be returned to the taxpayers." When districts don't have construction money in hand, they must borrow in the bond market. But the obscure elections that authorize the debt must only be publicized with a legal notice in a local newspaper and are dominated by firefighters and their families, records show. The elections may get scant coverage even in community newspapers. On the afternoon of April 27, 2000, Coram held a bond election to finance the biggest, most expensive firehouse on Long Island. With just 242 people voting, less than 2 percent of those registered in the district, the referendum passed easily, 136 to 98. A comparison of the voter roll and the department roster shows that at least 138 of those ballots were cast by department members or their relatives. Bond defeats Taxpayers have sometimes complained that fire officials seem to go out of their way to dampen voter turnout. In two communities in the last two years, that frustration led to the defeat of firehouse bonds. West Islip commissioners scheduled their $6.5 million bond vote for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on the Friday of Labor Day weekend 2003 and refused to issue absentee ballots. After residents barraged local lawmakers with calls, the vote was rescheduled, and the bond has been soundly defeated twice since. In Seaford in January, residents defeated a $5 million bond issue. Although the district says it had gone beyond the law, holding public meetings and sending out a mailing, residents complained they didn't have enough notice. The uproar prompted Nassau's assessor and comptroller to call for closer scrutiny of special districts. Some of the angriest fights between fire agencies and residents occur on those rare occasions when property is condemned to accommodate bigger firehouses. Over the last decade, downtown businesses have been demolished amid controversy in Central Islip, Northport and New Hyde Park to make way for expanded firehouses. In Central Islip, the Salvation Army thrift shop was torn down, and in Northport, a coffee bar; both were for parking spaces. Warren Unger remembered his shock in 1996 when he learned that the building his security systems business had leased for six years was being taken by the New Hyde Park Fire District for a gym. "I said, 'Listen, you've got to be kidding me,'" Unger recalled telling commissioners at the condemnation hearing. "'You're going to displace four businesses that are in there and operating ... for a gym? Why not take your racing car out of the racing bay and put a couple of machines in there?'" Fire Commissioner John Melinski said the gym helps the department maintain superior response times. "We try to keep our firemen on our property there in headquarters in case we have a call," said Melinski, 75, who spends much of his day at the firehouse and answers calls. " ... I use it myself, and I would say on a daily basis 20 to 30 other people do." Unger estimated that moving his business cost $27,000. A new 10,000-square-foot firehouse expansion, including a gym, was completed two years ago, but Unger still wonders if there wasn't an easier way for firefighters to stay fit. "Whatever happened to Jack LaLanne?" he asked. Stacey Altherr contributed to this story.

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Fire Alarm Day 2: Building boom

It can carry four firefighters 95 feet into the air to pluck people from multistory buildings, and collapse cinder-block walls with the force of its 2,000-gallon-per-minute stream of water. "Desire to serve," reads the decal on the door. But in four years, <a href="/topics/Yaphank%2C_NY">Yaphank</a>'s 30-ton, 45-foot-long Pierce aerial platform ladder truck hasn't gotten much use. Since its delivery in the spring of 2001, the $700,000 truck has fought only two fires -- one in a pile of discarded wooden pallets this summer and the other at a junkyard in neighboring <a href="/topics/Medford%2C_NY">Medford</a> two months ago. At the six house fires it has responded to, the truck stood with its 500-horsepower motor idling as firefighters went about their work by taking the stairs or climbing hand ladders. "Knock on wood, but we haven't really needed it," said Chief Robert Walther, who pointed out that the truck is heavily loaded with hand ladders and lifesaving equipment that come in handy at an emergency. "If that truck is not there, I'm short-handed ... Fortunately, I haven't had to use it 100 percent every day for everything that goes on, but without it, we're lost." <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>'s 179 fire agencies have the best trucks money can buy, and plenty of them: more than <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City and the city and county of <a href="/topics/Los_Angeles">Los Angeles</a> put together, which protect almost three times as much land and six times as many people and answer more than 12 times as many calls for help. And because of <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a>'s volunteer shortage, departments often have more trucks than they can fill. "What I need is volunteers," Mike Carrucci, then a <a href="/topics/Deer_Park%2C_NY">Deer Park</a> fire commissioner, said before the district bought a new pumper four years ago. "We can't even get two trucks out, let alone four and five." Privately, some officials say that shortage, and the decline in serious fires, mean their costliest trucks get more use in the fire department parades that roll down Main Street almost every weekend from spring to fall than they do in emergencies. In any given year, most Long Island departments have more fire trucks than fires that need an engine and hose to put them out, records show. The newest trucks are so large they sometimes don't fit in the departments' own firehouses or down tight neighborhood streets. And the abundance of top-flight fire equipment extends beyond engines and ladders. Heavy rescue trucks with specialized tools to cut open wrecked cars and winch firefighters into collapsed spaces can cost $750,000 or more. The <a href="/topics/New_York%2C_NY">New York</a> Fire Department owns one heavy rescue truck for each of its five boroughs, plus a single spare for use citywide. Long Island fire agencies own 146. Long Island departments commonly provide their unpaid chiefs and each of their assistant chiefs with the use of sport-utility vehicles loaded with electronics. In larger districts there are often personal-use cars for supervisors and mechanics, buses for trips to the county fire academy, parades and funerals, and "district vehicles" used by commissioners. Though the U.S. Coast Guard and police marine bureaus have primary responsibility for water rescues, fire agencies maintain 129 boats for that purpose. Lakeland owns a hovercraft; <a href="/topics/Centerport%2C_NY">Centerport</a>, a pair of Jet Skis; <a href="/topics/Wantagh%2C_NY">Wantagh</a>, a $75,000 fireboat. Premium apparatus Fire districts also use tax money to house, maintain and insure a variety of vehicles not used in firefighting, such as antique fire trucks for parades and high-performance racing vehicles for their tournaments. There also is no regional coordination of equipment purchases, and under state purchasing laws fire officials can pretty much pick out whatever they want: thousands of dollars worth of gold-leaf decorations, custom-built cabs for 10, and elaborate computerized controls. Long Island volunteers enjoy a reputation as being well trained, well organized and well funded, said Les Adams, a <a href="/topics/Maryland">Maryland</a>-based fire consultant. "They are known for buying the newest and the latest fire apparatus -- a lot of chrome -- and almost like money is no object," he said. Fred Heffel, a career New York City fire marshal and former South Farmingdale fire commissioner, has never forgotten what a salesman for the Pierce Fire Apparatus Co. once told him during a visit to its plant in <a href="/topics/Wisconsin">Wisconsin</a>. "There's $100,000 trucks, there's $200,000 trucks, there's $300,000 trucks," the salesman said, "and then there's Long Island fire trucks." This appetite for premium apparatus goes a long way toward explaining surveys showing that Long Island's volunteer fire departments cost three times as much to operate as the average volunteer department in the Northeast. Long Island's apparatus glut is an extreme example of a phenomenon common to volunteer fire departments in affluent suburbs across the country. When firefighting is administered at the community level rather than by the town or county, duplication of equipment often results, industry experts say. Justifying the purchases It's part of the reason Long Island's volunteer fire service, though cheaper per resident, costs more per call than the paid New York Fire Department. To local fire-service leaders, though, their equipment is a point of pride, not waste. "They [New York City officials] don't buy the apparatus that we buy, and they don't pay the kind of bucks for their apparatus that we do because they don't put the options into their fire apparatus that the volunteers do," said William Swift, a Glenwood Landing volunteer trustee, a paid Syosset Fire District mechanic, a former chairman of the Nassau Fire Commission and a fire truck salesman. "There are 20 things you won't find on a city rig but you'll find it on a Nassau County rig." The Centereach Fire District spent $394,000 in 2003 for a new fire engine with a deck gun that can aim an industrial-strength blast of water by remote control. North Massapequa recently paid $501,622 for a new Pierce pumper with a state-of-the-art system that uses compressed air to spray flame-smothering foam under the light of two 500-watt telescoping floodlights. Melville owns two 3,000 gallon-per-minute pumpers that are 50 percent more powerful than anything in the arsenal of the FDNY. Yet no hydrant in the Melville district is capable of producing that much water. To use the pumper at full capacity, multiple water lines must be tapped, Melville fire commission Chairman Salvatore Silvestri said. Silvestri justified the purchases by pointing to Melville's tangle of office parks and warehouses. "We're a mini-metropolis," he said. Some frustrated volunteers see these purchases as overkill, pure and simple. "Everything is ego-driven, everything is outdoing the Joneses," said a firefighter in the Village of Hempstead who didn't want his name used because he didn't want to make enemies. "They'll say, 'North Merrick got a new pumper? We have to top them. They got chrome rims? We want chrome rims with inlay.' " For the most part, Long Island fire officials justify their vehicles by pointing to ever-stricter national fire equipment standards, a patchwork of voluntary guidelines and federal requirements that they say more affluent communities have no excuse to ignore. The design of fire trucks is governed by standards of the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit technical advisory group. Exceeding standards A watershed 1987 decision by the NFPA required all fire trucks to have enclosed cabs because firefighter falls from the back of moving engines had been a leading cause of death in the line of duty. The important safety advance drove spending for bigger, more expensive trucks nationwide. The number of trucks each community should have is spelled out by the Insurance Services Office, a nationwide agency that helps insurance companies set fire insurance rates. Under the standards, fire departments should have a pumper stationed within 1.5 miles of developed areas and a ladder truck within 2.5 miles of areas that have more than five warehouses, factories or buildings of at least three stories. Long Island departments enjoy much better ISO ratings than New York State or the nation as a whole, the agency said, but that has less to do with the number of fire trucks than with the fact that much of the region is served by fire hydrants with good water pressure. Gregory Pittel, who rated Long Island fire agencies for ISO in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said many of the departments he visited had more equipment than they needed to meet standards. "Out of every four fire departments that had a ladder , there was probably one that did not need it," to satisfy ISO standards, Pittel said. Duplication of equipment Fire agencies could still earn good ISO ratings without buying as much equipment as standards call for, said Dennis Gage, chief of ISO's national rating program. Individual fire departments can do without certain pieces of equipment if a neighboring department is prepared to send that truck or pumper as specified in a formal mutual-aid plan. Many Long Island departments have informal mutual-aid arrangements with their neighbors, but the kind of official commitments ISO has in mind, which require joint planning and training between departments, are uncommon here. "Is there a duplication of equipment? Yeah, I'll be the first to say there is, but each district has to protect their own," said former Mastic Commissioner Charles Mineo. "Let's say Mastic had the only aerial [ladder truck] in the area and Brookhaven called us, and, God forbid, Mastic had a fire at the same time and somebody died -- you'd say, 'What the heck are you doing in Brookhaven when you were supposed to be in Mastic?' " As of September, Mastic's aerial truck had gone on 27 calls and was present at two working fires since it went into service in 2002, according to county records. Other fire officials counter that when a department sends its own equipment out of the district on a mutual-aid call, a third department is routinely called upon to provide backup. Elmont fire officials maintain a spare ladder truck that they use at fires in other communities. That leaves Elmont's two other ladder trucks free to protect its own 5.7-square-mile district. Decentralized approach The smaller the community, the more duplication results from Long Island's decentralized approach to fire equipment, according to a Newsday survey of emergency data and department fleets. The 36 smallest Long Island fire districts, measuring less than 2 square miles each, fought a total of 87 working fires in 2003, records show. They had 113 pumpers and ladder trucks to fight them. Five of the agencies serving the smallest areas are clustered along the Queens border and cover six-tenths of a square mile altogether: Bellerose, Bellerose Terrace, Floral Park Centre, South Floral Park and Stewart Manor. In 2000, according to the last tally circulated by county dispatchers, those five agencies had 10 pumpers and a ladder truck among them and answered 422 alarms -- none of which required the use of a fire engine. "I said, 'Do we need all these engines and their costs?' " said former Stewart Manor Chief Thomas Foley, who failed a decade ago in a bid to have the departments merge and is now volunteering in the Garden City Fire Department. History and tradition play a strong role in how agency lines are drawn. The Roslyn Fire Department covers its 11.7-square-mile area with two separate fire companies, an arrangement that dates back a century to when steamer engines were too heavy for horses to haul from the harborfront to the highlands. The companies, Rescue and Highlands, don't pool their heavy apparatus or coordinate purchases, officials said. Each company in the last few years has bought two of the latest in fire trucks, a hybrid pumper/aerial ladder truck called a quint. Highlands already had an aerial ladder truck; so Roslyn, a district that gets about a dozen working fires each year, has nine trucks to fight them with, including five ladder trucks. Last year, Rescue officials rebuffed an invitation to become part of Highlands, but talks are continuing. "It's ridiculous," said John Ceriello, an honorary Highlands member who is a New York City fire lieutenant. Ceriello thinks departments should be consolidated under some kind of regional authority. "Because you don't have an overseer on the county level, on any regional level, there's no one to say, 'No, you can't do that.' " East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz, whose village is served by both companies, said he has tried to persuade them to merge, so far with no success. "I have offered to sit as a nonvoting member of their board to participate," he said, "and we were told we weren't welcome unless we joined the fire department." James McCann, the Highlands president, is unapologetic. "If you want to join, Mayor Koblenz, come on down," he said in an interview. "If you want to have some input, join. My people put me in to serve in their best interest." 'So much pride' Nationwide, stressed departments in growing areas have frequently turned to consolidation, and one of the first results has been the shedding of equipment, industry experts said. Orange County, Calif., is an affluent suburban region of 1.2 million residents south of <a href="/topics/Los_Angeles">Los Angeles</a>, with a mix of buildings and communities similar to Long Island's. The Orange County Fire Authority, a combination department of paid and volunteer firefighters, protects 516 square miles, an area 43 percent the size of Nassau and Suffolk counties. They do it with less than one-tenth the equipment: 81 engines, 14 ladder trucks and one heavy rescue truck, compared to 693 engines, 190 ladders and 146 heavy rescue trucks on Long Island. "We're very fond of our fire engines," said Orange County Battalion Chief Scott Brown. "There is so much emotion around them, so much pride, it's the very reason there is an allure to this profession." That pride was on display on a summer night on Long Island four years ago when Deer Park commissioners debated the need to replace a scarcely used 15-year-old pumper with a fancier one. After some debate about whether the engine was really needed, the commissioners, saying the volunteers deserved the best equipment, voted 4-1 to go ahead with the purchase. They chose to go with the higher of two bids at $450,000. "I would spend any amount of money we have to give them the right equipment to do the right job," said Anthony Macaluso, then the board chairman. Stacey Altherr contributed to this story.

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Fire Alarm Day 3: The trucks

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Fire Alarm Day 4: The perks

In the fall of 2003, a longtime Manhasset volunteer firefighter and businessman placed a startling advertisement in the local newspaper. "Volunteerism has been stretched to the breaking point," wrote <a href="/topics/Brian_Kenny">Brian Kenny</a>, a volunteer since 1960. It was time, he argued, to "get past the emotional trap of tradition and brotherhood," time for the <a href="/topics/Manhasset%2C_NY">Manhasset</a>-Lakeville Fire District to start hiring firefighters and paramedics. The ad sparked outrage and denunciations from volunteers. But, the truth was, department members it had hired to maintain its firehouses were already being sent on calls when too few volunteers showed up. It's just another example of how <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>'s volunteer fire service is becoming a little less volunteer every day. Payroll, civil service and alarm records confirm what many firefighters have been saying: Fire agencies in <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> and <a href="/topics/Suffolk">Suffolk</a> are hiring ever-growing numbers of employees to do jobs volunteers once did. Most fire employees are paid to mop the floor, open the mail and tend the trucks. But, officially or not, many now also are expected to handle the volunteers' core firefighting and medical duties if needed, getting around civil service rules. At least 19 agencies also are now officially hiring paid emergency medical technicians because they admit that their members can't keep up with the demands on them. Today, <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a> fire agencies employ at least 1,800 people, an average of 10 full- and part-time workers for each fire agency, at a cost of more than $52 million annually. Their numbers are small next to the 20,000 volunteers in <a href="/topics/Nassau_County%2C_NY">Nassau</a> and <a href="/topics/Suffolk_County%2C_NY">Suffolk</a>, but they are becoming indispensable. Only one in six fire agencies still function as purely volunteer organizations with no paid staff. From the Nassau-<a href="/topics/Queens%2C_NY">Queens</a> border to <a href="/topics/East_End">East End</a> beach communities, firehouse sign boards carry the same plaintive message these days: "Volunteers Needed." Neither the wellspring of support for firefighters everywhere after the Sept. 11 attacks nor vigorous public-service ad campaigns seeking new recruits have done much to increase volunteer ranks, especially in more affluent fire districts where the high cost of homes has driven out young, would-be volunteers. The rise in two-income and commuter families also has changed the equation. "I had two kids within my first year of marriage -- I was working overtime, and my wife was working, so I had to care for the kids while she was at work," said Michael Benfante, 34, a former <a href="/topics/North_Patchogue%2C_NY">North Patchogue</a> firefighter, explaining why he quit recently. "So there really wasn't much time." A shifting landscape In Manhasset, a committee appointed by the district as a result of Kenny's ad later acknowledged a weekday volunteer shortage and urged hiring a "nucleus" of firefighters and emergency medical technicians to fill the gap. The committee even had the idea that the paid custodians now stationed in each of the five firehouses, who already answered some fire and medical calls, should instead be clustered in one firehouse each weekday. "If there's a fire, they have a full truck complement right there," said Paul Early, the chairman. The district took that advice, and custodians who are firefighters now roll together on calls. Officials in other districts across Long Island also are struggling to negotiate a shifting landscape, patching together reliable protection with a crazy-quilt of hiring while at the same time trying to preserve the "all-volunteer" system and its traditions. "There's no contradiction there at all," said Frank Nocerino, treasurer of the state fire districts' association and a <a href="/topics/North_Massapequa%2C_NY">North Massapequa</a> commissioner. He said whenever any of North Massapequa's six employees answers a call, "they have to punch out and then they've got to punch back in ... We're hiring people because we've got work to do. We've got to keep up the grounds, the electrical, the mechanical." In 2001 Terryville commissioners made no bones about why they were hiring a dozen custodians; they were there to answer medical calls when needed. Commissioners brushed off volunteers' complaints that this would be a fatal blow to their morale. "This ain't the Moose or the Elks, this is to protect life and property," Terryville Chairman William Theis said then. "They weren't coming out." Theis said he now believes it's time to start hiring firefighters, too. <a href="/topics/Melville%2C_NY">Melville</a> Commissioner Salvatore Silvestri said his district is gathering information on how it might add some paid firefighters. "Even now we discuss among ourselves when is the time to pull the trigger, and how do you pull the trigger?" he said. " ... Will you potentially lose some solid volunteers? I don't know, and those are things that we have to face here. But the calls have to be answered. The calls must be answered." 'Textbook transition' But for now the taboo against hiring firefighters holds. For 99 of its 100 years, the <a href="/topics/Roslyn%2C_NY">Roslyn</a> Highlands fire company protected its residents without a single employee. By 2003, President James McCann proudly pointed out, his volunteers had answered 2,140 alarms and managed two fire stations and all their equipment. But last year they gave in to the pressures, hiring a Highlands life member to work as a part-time cleaner. "When there is a fire alarm now," McCann said, "he goes." The muddying of the lines between volunteers and paid employees has led some critics to say it's time for most Long Island agencies to stop calling themselves all-volunteer. "There's a fundamental dishonesty that is being perpetrated here," said Jay Gusler, former firefighters' union president in Long Beach, one of only two Long Island communities partly staffed by crews of paid firefighters. "... I think the primary motivation is to be able to cling to that volunteer banner, that here's the wonderful guys who do it for pride, not for a paycheck." Long Island is going through a process that public safety experts have documented throughout the country for decades, said Les Adams, a Maryland consultant who has been an officer in both paid and volunteer departments. "To be honest, this is a textbook transition," he said. ".. It generally goes through certain phases, starting with, for example, custodians and drivers and leading to an officially recognized combination [paid and volunteer] fire department." Burnout is a driving force in the process, and it goes beyond responding to alarms. Bill Reilly recalled that when he joined the West Babylon Fire Department as a teenager in 1960, he got his first emergency medical certification after eight hours of training. Today, volunteers need 150 classroom hours and refreshers every three years. Firefighters, he said, must complete 18 classes at the county fire academy and spend six evenings a month at the firehouse. "Firefighters are doing what would have been 10 years of service in two or three years," Reilly said. "So we lose them." Service cutbacks The shortage is felt most keenly during the workday. Almost two-thirds of all emergency calls come in between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., but, on weekdays, a third fewer volunteers respond during those hours than during the evening, state and county incident reports show. Departments are coping in a variety of ways. Some, such as Manhasset-Lakeville, are cutting back on the service they provide. The district pulled out of the county 911 service during weekday hours for medical calls two years ago, leaving the job to county police ambulances. Most are relying more heavily on older members, officials said. A 2003 survey by Suffolk County estimated that 41 percent of firefighters are more than 45 years old. "During the daytime, I make all the calls, because we're short of firemen," said George Caracost, 82, the longtime Island Park commissioner and ex-chief who once broke in former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato as a firefighter. "Technically, I'm not allowed to go inside the building, but during the daytime, who's going to see it?" Other agencies, especially village departments, depend on members on municipal payrolls. Long Island's towns, villages, county agencies and school districts employ hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers, records show, and commonly allow them to answer alarms during working hours. More civil service hires But the biggest change spurred by the pressures on fire agencies has been the increase in their payrolls. In 1996, Suffolk County listed 734 civil service employees working for fire districts on a full- or part-time basis. By last year, that number had risen to 1,126 positions, a 53 percent jump. Records show fire districts tend to hire people into the lowest-rung job titles requiring no special qualifications or else impose a residency requirement that allows them to give preference to their own members, even for jobs that require civil service tests. Some fire agencies expect more of their employees than their job titles might suggest. When the Plainview Fire Department placed an ad for a firehouse maintainer in a firefighters' newspaper, it noted that in addition to janitorial skills, "Applicant must be an interior structural firefighter, EMT or better," with a valid driver's license. Plainview's superintendent, Eric Burel, said the department simply wanted employees with the right background. He would not say whether any were going on calls. "What they do on their own time, after they punch out, is their business," he said. "I don't monitor them." Islip commissioners last year voted to hire one of their volunteers as a "Custodial Worker I" provided that he "obtain his EMT certification ASAP ... Upon certification, he will respond to rescue calls," according to board minutes. 'Why hire somebody else?' Islip Commissioner Benjamin Galletto said the district hired two of its own department members to answer medical calls. He said it was better than creating jobs for EMTs and hiring off the county's civil service list. "They were in our department already, so why hire somebody else?" he said. "They don't go out on mutual-aid calls ... We use them for our own taxpayers in our district." A spot check of alarm books from several districts for 2001, 2002 and last year showed a pattern of firehouse staff answering both medical and fire alarms during regular working hours. Of those districts, Brentwood, one of the busiest on Long Island, made the most use of those employees to respond to fire calls. Brentwood's paid district superintendent answered 27 fire alarms in January 2002, while a firehouse attendant answered 45 calls. A clerk-typist went to 30 fire calls, and a custodian answered 60, driving the fire truck on 18 of them. Brentwood fire Commissioner Donald Spier said his agency's policy mirrored that of his own former private employer, which used to let him him leave work to answer daytime alarms. But one veteran Brentwood member who declined to be identified for fear of alienating his colleagues said it was more dire than that; employees were covering calls because the department had difficulty mustering volunteer crews. Another said the odds of an engine leaving the firehouse with a crew of five or six were "the luck of the draw." New Hyde Park doesn't worry about having a full crew on its engines, sending them out with only two people aboard, meeting the rest of the volunteers at the scene. It patches its weekday crews together with municipal employees from village hall across the street, volunteers who work at supportive local businesses and several of its own firehouse workers who regularly drive the trucks. While the district has had to hire EMTs to deal with the glut of medical calls, this combination of tactics helped them get an engine to fire calls faster than any department on Long Island last year, records show. "It's a good system," said former fire Commissioner Reid Sakowich, "and it works." But Gusler, the former Long Beach fire union president, scoffs at districts' rationales for filling out fire crews with employees. "We're talking about firefighters," he said. "These people are hired for that reason. They just refuse to call them firefighters." Working around rules There are many reasons fire agencies want to avoid calling their employees firefighters or EMTs. It would limit whom they could hire. Labor laws would ban the hiring of their own members into such jobs, and candidates would have to be selected from competitive civil service test lists. It would add expense. A firefighting custodian is much less expensive than a bona fide firefighter, who is entitled to more generous disability and pension programs. It also would force agencies that depend on member pride to publicly admit they could no longer protect the community by themselves. Under state law, fire districts can't hire firefighters without holding public hearings first. No such rule pertains to EMTs, however. And with emergency medical calls making up two-thirds of the burden these days, officials' resistance to hiring full-fledged EMTs has crumbled. At least 15 Suffolk agencies and at least four in Nassau now have them on their payrolls. Terryville has converted its staff of ambulance-riding custodians to 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week paramedics. Hiring emergency medical technicians is one thing, but hiring firefighters is another. Fighting fires is why the fire departments came into being, and it remains the heart of their identity. "We've always put the fires out," said Roger Putnam, an East Northport volunteer and president of the Suffolk County Volunteer Firemen's Association. "... There's a lot of pride in being a volunteer fireman, and if you knew you had guys that were paid on the clock, sitting there, just waiting for fire calls, it kind of hurts a little bit ... That kind of discourages the whole idea of the volunteer system." Stacey Altherr contributed to this story. 
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Fire Alarm Day 5: The volunteers

The Suffolk County police officer ministering to a stricken Martin O'Brien in his Ridge retirement home in April 2003 was becoming increasingly annoyed, calling every few minutes on his cell phone, asking when an ambulance would be there. After the <a href="/topics/Ridge%2C_NY">Ridge</a> Fire Department failed to answer an alarm from county dispatchers, the call kicked over to <a href="/topics/Rocky_Point%2C_NY">Rocky Point</a>, then to <a href="/topics/Middle_Island%2C_NY">Middle Island</a>, records show, but neither department could provide an ambulance. After 37 minutes, <a href="/topics/Yaphank%2C_NY">Yaphank</a> volunteers arrived at O'Brien's home. By the time he made it to St. Charles Hospital in <a href="/topics/Port_Jefferson%2C_NY">Port Jefferson</a>, a stroke had already done serious damage, and the next day he suffered a heart attack. "The doctors told me, 'If you'd gotten here sooner, we could have done a lot more for you,'" O'Brien, 84, said. Before the stroke, he walked three miles a day; afterward, he was happy just to make it as far as the bathroom. Ridge, long one of <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>'s slowest ambulance services, finally took steps to deal with the problem this summer, hiring paid ambulance crews to staff the firehouse around the clock. Its average response time has dropped from 14 minutes to about 81/2, which is lower than the county average. "I apologize for back then, not being able to answer the call," Chief Michael Gianmugnai said. "We're working very hard on it." While officials say they can still muster volunteers for fires, overwork and burnout are driving <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a> medical volunteers away and forcing a rapidly growing number of agencies to turn their work over to paid crews. And in <a href="/topics/Suffolk">Suffolk</a>, resident deaths have spurred lawmakers and health officials to push for more coordination and a bigger role for government in protecting the public. Faster service Long <a href="/topics/New_York_Islanders">Islanders</a> today generally receive faster ambulance service by more highly trained crews than when the system was studied by Newsday in 1988 and found to be "outdated and chaotic," plagued by long response times and uneven levels of care. Though neither county collects dispatch records for all the calls answered, available <a href="/topics/Suffolk_County%2C_NY">Suffolk</a> County records show it took an average of 9 minutes and 39 seconds for an ambulance to reach the scene of an emergency call last year, a significant improvement from the 12-minute average Newsday found in 1988. In <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a>, where most calls are answered by paid county police ambulances, records from 52 fire departments show callers waited 7 minutes, 23 seconds for volunteer ambulances last year. Newsday's 1988 analysis did not track volunteers, but found police ambulances took 10 minutes to arrive. But delays continue to bedevil the system. In Suffolk, where medical duties are shared by 72 fire departments and 26 ambulance companies, residents who suffered cardiac arrest outside of a hospital over the last four years had only a 2.1 percent chance of surviving, health officials found, giving the county one of the nation's poorest records on a measure that experts tie directly to the speed of emergency response. A Suffolk health department study found that those who dial 911 with medical emergencies are likely to get their first help from county police, who carry oxygen and defibrillators and usually arrive before the ambulance. Those and other discouraging statistics have left the volunteers on the defensive this year, resisting tighter regulations pushed by county lawmakers and health officials. <a href="/topics/Nassau_County%2C_NY">Nassau</a> emergency medical officials say they do not have the money to study cardiac-arrest survival rates. But volunteers are turning a steadily increasing share of their burden over to county police ambulances, which Newsday found now handle more than half of medical calls. Police have added at least two ambulances just since last year at the request of beleaguered southern Nassau fire officials. That development has spurred the usually diffident county fire commission, made of volunteer representatives, this year to ask for its first study of the county's emergency medical system, one so decentralized that no agency tallies how many calls for help came in countywide. "We're starting to do a whole look at delivery," said Peter Williams, the former commission chairman. "The one thing I can tell you from statistics is that calls are going up every year -- they are not going down." Emergency-work challenges Fire-safety advances and an aging population have transformed emergency work here, just as they have across the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>. Once, ambulance runs were just a small part of the service fire departments provided, but they began to outnumber fire calls by the early 1970s. Between 1980 and 2000, civilian deaths to fire dropped by 70 percent and building fires by more than half throughout <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a>, while medical emergencies multiplied. Today, when a Nassau or Suffolk resident calls for help, it's almost three times as likely to be a medical problem as it is a fire call. But fire departments still typically train many more firefighters than they do emergency medical technicians, records show. And fire alarms still tend to get the quickest, most reliable response, according to a Newsday analysis of more than half a million dispatch records and incident reports from the two counties from 2000 to 2005. Overall, Suffolk volunteers got to fire alarms about a minute faster than medical alarms, while in Nassau the gap was two minutes. In the Village of Lynbrook, for example, residents waited an average of 8 minutes, 54 seconds for an ambulance last year, while fire emergencies got an engine in an average of 4 minutes, 58 seconds. That may be because of the startling difference in the burden its emergency medical company members carry: Lynbrook's roughly 25 medical company volunteers handled 1,326 calls last year, while the department's remaining 192 members tackled 367 fire alarms. Calls for help are also much more likely to go unanswered if they are for medical emergencies, according to Suffolk dispatch records. One out of every five medical emergencies required a second call to prompt volunteers to turn out, while only one in 20 fire alarms needed a second summons. Last year, Suffolk dispatchers had to seek help from a neighboring agency on 5,252 medical calls because the original department didn't answer them. That phenomenon is so unheard of for fire calls that the county database has no place to record it. "There are no non-responses to fires," said David Fischler, Suffolk's former commissioner of fire, rescue and emergency services. "It doesn't happen." Saturday, April 12, 2003, the day Martin O'Brien suffered his stroke, is a perfect example. The Ridge Fire Department got three calls for help that day. An early-morning fire call about trouble with a transformer drew three chiefs and two fire trucks, records show. When a gas detector alarm went off in the afternoon, the second assistant chief went, accompanied by two more fire trucks. Only O'Brien's medical call went unanswered. That year, Ridge received 1,439 ambulance calls and missed 170 of them; it answered all 453 fire alarms. Even with full-time paid crews, they still miss one in 10 ambulance calls, according to the county. Tougher training standards While the improving standards of care by Long Island's ambulance volunteers has benefited the public, it has also strained departments' ability to keep their ambulances staffed. State law requires significantly more training for EMT certification than for a firefighting certificate -- 150 hours of instruction, with refresher training every three years, compared with about 35 hours for firefighters and periodic drills at each department's discretion. And volunteers complain frequently about the time-consuming drudgery of medical calls. By the time an EMS team has interviewed and treated a patient, transported him to the hospital, filled out the medical paperwork and cleaned up the ambulance, at least an hour has passed. By contrast, most fire calls end within a few minutes because they are for false alarms or minor incidents that don't require so much as the unfolding of a hose, records show. Firefighters cross-trained in emergency medicine say they think twice before answering medical calls. "Look, if my pager goes off at 6:30 in the morning for a fire, I know I could be home in 20 minutes," said one longtime Suffolk volunteer who asked not to be named. "If it's a rescue call, I'm definitely going to be late for work. You have to make choices." For all their effort, emergency medical volunteers tend to find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order in their firehouses, where pride traditionally has centered on the big rigs and those who ride them. Holbrook Fire Commissioner Michael Timo recalled that when he started as an ambulance volunteer 20 years ago, "I was told right from the get-go, if you're branded as a Band-Aid person, you'll never make it to chief ... "It's almost looked upon as being less than masculine. You're told, 'If you want to be a real man, go to a fire instead.'" In most Long Island departments, fire chiefs aren't required to have emergency medical certification, even though department bylaws place them in charge of both fire and medical scenes. In some departments, such as South Farmingdale, emergency medical volunteers aren't allowed to run for chief. Most chiefs respect the expertise of their medically trained volunteers and defer to them, said Guy Cassara, a former captain in the Lindenhurst Fire Department who serves as vice chairman of Suffolk's Regional Emergency Medical Services Council, which helps coordinate medical response in the county. "The problem here is that every chief in every department can do whatever they want for that department -- that's home rule," he said. In Suffolk, that philosophy has led to a situation where dispatchers must consult a notebook filled with widely varying instructions each agency has left about how long dispatchers must wait for them to say they're on their way to a call before seeking help from another agency. In places like Middle Island, it's as quick as four minutes, but in Miller Place, it's as long as 10 minutes. Suffolk volunteers, especially on the East End, have repeatedly appealed a new rule by Cassara's council that would standardize the procedures, saying local chiefs are best equipped to make their own decisions. And as volunteer agencies hire more EMTs to ease the stress on their members, the home-rule philosophy means those crews usually aren't allowed to leave their districts -- in other words, someone who dials 911 may not get help from the community next door, even if paid crews are sitting in quarters waiting for a call. If paid crews are needed, it makes more sense for them to be hired by a countywide "support structure" that could send them anywhere volunteers can't respond, Jeanne Alicandro, Suffolk's emergency medical services director, told county legislators in 2003. Alicandro, who reports to the county health commissioner, and the emergency services council had urged lawmakers to form a government commission that could compel volunteer agencies to make changes. Their proposal won no support, but it did spur volunteer fire and ambulance officials to call for Alicandro's removal. County officials have begun interviewing for her replacement. The Fire Chiefs Council of Suffolk County asked that Alicandro, who had previously run the medevac service at Stony Brook University Hospital, be replaced "with another individual who, at the very least, has a minimum of five years experience riding with an active EMS provider." Still, fire officials are responding to the growing pressures in other ways, like abandoning a tradition that once required medical volunteers to fight fires before they could ride ambulances. These days, chiefs may ask newcomers to do the EMS training first. "That's where the work is," said former Cold Spring Harbor Chief Louis England. 'This is a horror' But residents like Charlotte Lisi of Melville contend this affluent region can afford to do better. Lisi was out shopping on the evening of Dec. 23, 1999, when her husband of 35 years suddenly had difficulty breathing and dialed 911. By the time an ambulance arrived, 13 minutes later, Anthony Lisi, 60, was sprawled in the doorway in full cardiac arrest. He was never revived. Charlotte Lisi sued the fire department, but the case was dismissed after a judge found no evidence of negligence. Eighteen Melville volunteers had dropped what they were doing to race to Lisi's home that day. But this grieving widow doesn't question her local volunteers' dedication; she and her husband always gave at fund-drive time. What bothers her is the six minutes the ambulance had to wait for them to come to the station before it could get under way. Paid in-house crews might have been on their way to her husband within a minute if they'd been on duty that night. Melville, with twice the nation's median household income, already pays $210 per resident for its volunteer fire department each year -- well above the average cost of fully paid departments. A fire district official noted that it already had some paid EMTs when Anthony Lisi collapsed and is now exploring hiring more. "We have beautiful firehouses, magnificent equipment that's the best in the country -- and no manpower," Charlotte Lisi said. " ... This is a horror." Stacey Altherr was the principal researcher on this story; she was later joined by staff writers Tom McGinty and Eden Laikin.

nyf-inems

Fire Alarm Day 6: EMS service

nyf-inover

Fire Alarm Day 7: The oversight

When talk turns to changing the way Long Island's fire service protects its 2.7 million residents, the debate is often cast in extremes: It's either keep the all-volunteer system just as it is, or replace the whole thing with paid, unionized firefighters and send taxes through the roof. But across the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a>, places like <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> have found ways to improve service and preserve their traditions with less expensive steps. In suburban <a href="/topics/Philadelphia">Philadelphia</a>, Whitpain Township hired four career firefighter/emergency medical technicians four years ago to backstop their volunteers during busy daytime hours. Outside of <a href="/topics/Bellingham">Bellingham</a>, Wash., volunteers in Whatcom County Fire District No. 2 work shifts at the firehouse on weekends and holidays to ensure engines leave within a minute of an alarm. In the Washington, D.C., suburbs, 19 once-independent departments in Montgomery County, Md., operate under a county fire chief who decides where firehouses should be built and how many trucks are needed. When someone in <a href="/topics/Chevy_Chase">Chevy Chase</a> dials 911, a county dispatcher sends the nearest available engine, staffed by paid and volunteer firefighters, regardless of which department's territory the fire is in. All are attempts to cope with the relentless turnover, weekday shortages of emergency workers and burgeoning ambulance calls that have put pressure on volunteers everywhere. "Much of the volunteer fire service across the <a href="/topics/United_States">United States</a> is currently in crisis," an International Association of Fire Chiefs report concluded last year. " ... Many volunteer departments in more populated areas are in a state of crisis and face a deep-seated struggle to provide adequate services." <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a> is the last densely populated region in America served almost exclusively by volunteers, but the system here is showing signs of strain. Though they are among the best-funded, best-trained and best-equipped in the nation, fire departments here are falling prey to many of the same problems that have plagued agencies nationwide. "Was the volunteer fire service ever designed to do what Long Island fire departments are doing right now? I don't think so," said Gil Hanse, <a href="/topics/Babylon%2C_NY">Babylon</a> Town's director of emergency preparedness and a longtime volunteer. "We're like a city. With the amount of people that we have and the service we're expected to provide, has it become a burden? Yes." While almost three-quarters of country's fire departments are all-volunteer, they protect only 22.8 percent of the population because they are almost exclusively found in communities smaller than 25,000 people, according to a 2003 report by the National Fire Protection Association. More than a third of the nation's population -- including <a href="/topics/Long_Beach%2C_NY">Long Beach</a> and <a href="/topics/Garden_City%2C_NY">Garden City</a> -- is protected by "combination" departments, staffed by a mix of paid and volunteer firefighters. The number of all-paid agencies has steadily grown, protecting 45 percent of U.S. residents. In its efforts to keep up, Long Island's more than $319 million-a-year volunteer system has become so expensive -- three times per resident what it costs for other Northeastern volunteer systems -- that some of its most loyal members and some local officials are saying it's time to take a hard look at where things are headed. "We know the volunteers are fantastic and we're grateful and value their service," said <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> County Executive <a href="/topics/Tom_Suozzi">Tom Suozzi</a>. "We know there's a problem and there's no proposed solution. ... We can't be afraid to talk about this stuff just because it's never been talked about before." <a href="/topics/Nassau_County%2C_NY">Nassau</a> Assessor <a href="/topics/Harvey_Levinson">Harvey Levinson</a> talks about changing state law to fund volunteer departments through townwide taxes, which would even out tax rates and give towns some measure of supervision over fire spending. "The whole system is flawed and has to be changed," he said. <a href="/topics/Stewart_Manor%2C_NY">Stewart Manor</a> Mayor Joseph Troiano wonders whether it's time to consolidate some departments. "Someone once told me in a budget hearing that you can't put a price on safety," he said. "I said, 'You have to put a price on everything. Nobody gets a blank check.'" <a href="/topics/Melville%2C_NY">Melville</a> commissioners are investigating adding paid firefighters, while Terryville has begun calculating how much it might cost to "buddy up" with neighboring districts to hire fire crews. And the <a href="/topics/Jericho2">Jericho</a> Fire District has gone so far as to build sleeping quarters into its new firehouse. "Should Nassau County ever go paid," said Commissioner David Marmann, a <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City fire lieutenant, "that would be a perfect location for a paid company to be." Many of its most ardent supporters, though, say the volunteer system delivers quality service that residents couldn't afford without volunteers' sacrifices. "It's good for the community," said former New <a href="/topics/Hyde_Park">Hyde Park</a> Commissioner Reid Sakowich, whose family ties to his fire department encompass four generations. "It's a good system and it works, and when something works, you support it 100 percent." The Firemen's Association of the State of <a href="/topics/New_York%2C_NY">New York</a>, the volunteers' lobbying group, has been circulating a report to state legislators -- sharply challenged by fire unions -- that estimates that replacing volunteers with paid firefighters would cost Long Island taxpayers $1.3 billion more a year than they pay today. The report, which does not look at the cost of combination departments, assumes Long Island would need almost as many paid firefighters as it now has volunteers -- that the tenth-of-a-square-mile village of Stewart Manor, for example, would need 55 paid firefighters to replace its 45 volunteers. But national insurance standards say that one paid firefighter does the work of three volunteers. For many advocates of change, "going paid" is the last thing they want to do to their fire departments. They point instead to the example of the Washington, D.C., suburbs, especially Montgomery and Prince Georges counties in Maryland, whose fire departments have experimented for decades with ways of marrying the best of the volunteer and paid services. It has been more than 25 years since Montgomery placed its departments under county control, a step that volunteers had thwarted with a public referendum a decade before. Since then, the change has been nearly constant. Today, Montgomery has about 1,000 union firefighters and 1,000 volunteers, half of whom regularly answer emergency calls. They train side by side and fight fires as equals under a volunteer chief. This year, though, a new paid county chief has been given authority over fire policy and operations, including equipment purchases and where firehouses are built. "We're on -- hopefully -- the tail end of over 30 years of difficult transition," Tom Carr, the county's new chief, said. "... We're becoming standardized in everything we do, and that's powerful." About a fourth of Montgomery volunteers commit to spend regular duty shifts at their firehouse to assure a fully staffed engine is always available. The result is that residents there can count on getting an engine or ambulance within six minutes of their 911 call 80 percent of the time. Long Island ambulances responded in 6 minutes or less 35 percent of the time last year. Fire engines here reached the scene in 6 minutes or less 44 percent of the time. At about $166 a resident, Montgomery County's system costs more than Long Island's, which comes to $136 a resident when county and town emergency costs here are included. Without such costs, which include independent ambulance companies, county fire academies and fire marshals, Long Islanders pay $113 per resident for their volunteer departments. The combination system in Prince Georges County is less expensive than Long Island at about $83 per resident. There, about 1,200 volunteers divide response duties with just over 700 paid firefighters. Paid crews cover most of the 44 firehouses in Prince Georges during the day and volunteers are in charge nights and weekends. Volunteers are far more dominant there -- the original volunteer departments still own most of the firehouses and heavy apparatus, while the county supplies the ambulances and paid firefighters and pays for maintenance, upkeep and administration. Struggle for pride Even after more than 25 years, both counties still have to expend a lot of management energy making sure everyone gets along. Volunteers have been known to taunt union guys as "paid maids" or refuse to allow them on the fire trucks, and paid firefighters sometimes challenge volunteers' skills. In one Prince George's station, volunteers kicked out a paid firefighter, saying he was short on "pride" in their mission. Around the country, as overwhelmed volunteers hand some of their duties over to paid firefighters, that struggle for pride has become a familiar one. It is rarely painless. "The real question is, who are we attempting to satisfy? ... Is the customer actually the public or is it the members of the department?" asked Larry Curl, ex-chief of the 500-member Wayne Township, Ind., department that once billed itself as the world's largest volunteer fire agency. Curl himself was embroiled in a bitter standoff with the township, refusing to hand over the keys to the fire trucks after his suburban Indianapolis department was reorganized as a combination agency six years ago. Eventually, Curl backed down and he later told fellow chiefs that he believed combination departments were "the wave of the future." The government's first step was to shed millions of dollars' worth of trucks. "We thought we were doing everything right, but there was no guarantee on the services we were providing," Curl said in a telephone seminar sponsored by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, which has paid and volunteer members. Since then, the department's volunteer membership has shrunk to just 50 after the new administration began requiring them to meet training standards and serve a minimum of 40 hours each month, said Deputy Chief Rick Batza. In New York, senior state fire officials and the Professional Firefighters Association, which represents 25,000 unionized firefighters, issued a 1987 report recommending combination departments modeled after Washington's suburbs as the most economical means of providing more reliable service. By last year, the federal government listed 45 New York fire departments as partly paid, including a dozen in Westchester County. Recently, officials throughout the state -- from Westchester County to the suburbs of Utica, Binghamton and Buffalo -- have been urging more regional coordination, though they have yet to see results. But many of those familiar with Long Island traditions say residents here prefer the more personal touch of local agencies, even if they cost more. "Certainly the volunteers want their own identity, but that is also true of the citizenry, who believe that if there was a consolidation and they had a problem that the response times for them would be longer," said state Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), a sponsor over the years of laws providing benefits to volunteers. "... We can't get consolidation of school districts when it makes all the sense in the world both fiscally and educationally ... If anyone is thinking of a countywide [fire and ambulance] system, hell would freeze over quicker." Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, said he wasn't optimistic about his union's prospects of supplanting Long Island volunteers. "I can't ignore that they are well-funded, they have a relationship in their communities and they're ... recognized as a political force, whether real or perceived," Schaitberger said. No guarantees That power was on display in Babylon Town in the late 1990s. Amid growing concern about volunteer shortages, Babylon civic groups asked the town to explore merging its 11 volunteer departments into a single paid agency. The Joint Civic and Taxpayers Council figured they would need just three of Babylon's 29 firehouses, and the $20 million those departments spend could be put into hiring firefighters. To meet national insurance standards, though, a townwide department would need at least seven firehouses in order to have an engine within 11/2 miles of all parts of town. Rough estimates based on New York City costs suggest that staffing each of those stations with a paid five-person crew would surpass $35 million, although staffing at Montgomery County levels would cost just over $21 million. The town told the group their idea was too expensive. "All they did was get angry at us for bringing the issue up," Carolyn Mammarella, the council's former president, said of the firefighters. "The volunteers look at it as a personal attack." At $94 per person in 2003, Babylon's volunteer agencies cost its residents as much as the average combination department in the Northeast. But on 744 occasions that year, they were unable to respond to medical alarms, forcing residents to wait as long as 39 minutes for some other agency to pick up the call, Suffolk records show. "How many lives do we give up because we choose to depend on volunteer firemen and EMTs coming?" Mammarella asked. "You have multiple layers of equipment virtually sitting next door to each other, from West Babylon to Lindenhurst, but there are no guarantees." Richard Vella, president of the Babylon fire chiefs' council, said there is no need to consolidate firehouses in the town because no one has trouble getting their fire trucks out, and they're studying ways to improve ambulance service. One option, he said, is pooling their volunteers and assigning them to duty shifts. "We're working on it," Vella said. "We're not standing here with our feet stuck in the mud." Fire service leaders have tended to be more open to experimentation in emergency medical service, the area placing the greatest burden on volunteers and the one that is less rooted in department traditions. Nassau's fire commission has authorized the first systematic study that anyone can remember of the county's fragmented emergency medical system. "The concern is really driven by the volume," said Peter Williams, the former commission chairman. "It keeps going up and up and up. That taps a lot of resources." In Port Washington, the fire department's ambulance volunteers already serve duty shifts at its Harbor Road station. In Suffolk, David Brenner, a longtime Holbrook volunteer and chairman of the county Regional Emergency Medical Services Council, said he believes that duty shifts and regional coordination could help save the volunteer system. If each Suffolk EMT pledged to work one 12-hour shift every 45 days, there could be 62 ambulances on the road around the clock ready to respond without regard to agency boundaries, providing faster, more reliable service. "As a volunteer, I'd love to do this, to be on the road for 12 hours, guaranteeing I'm going to be responding to any call near my sector," he said. "I don't volunteer to sit waiting for a call, watching cartoons. I want to go. That's why we volunteer." Deep-seated tensions But discussions like that, whenever they touch on the prerogatives of the volunteers, tend to be fraught with the tension that only deep feelings and lifelong commitments can stir. For instance, when doubts about the future of the Manhasset-Lakeville Fire Department were raised by a longtime volunteer in newspaper ads in 2003, the department scoffed at his accusations and forbade members to speak to him about them. But residents persuaded commissioners to appoint a study committee because it was, in the words of its chairman, Ret. Adm. Paul Early, "too important to be ignored, trivialized or swept under the rug." John Keitz -- a former mayor of Plandome Heights, which is protected by the department -- said that kind of scrutiny is always a delicate business, but necessary. "They're your friends and neighbors, and people don't want to get their friends and neighbors mad at them ... " Keitz said. "But how are we going to get anywhere if we don't talk about it?"

nyf-innext

Fire Alarm Day 8: What's next?

The Coram Fire District violated state bidding law - in one instance by awarding a contract to a fire commissioner's brother - and failed to properly supervise the district treasurer, according to a state comptroller's audit. 
The district did not seek competitive bids for certain contracts - including two for more than $53,000 for landscaping and snow removal that went to Heidrich Landscaping and Half Mile Landscaping, both of Coram and both owned by Brian Heidrich, brother of board commissioner Timothy Heidrich, according to the comptroller's office. 
The district did not publicly advertise for bids for the two contracts, worth $32,891 and $20,550, violating both general municipal law and the district's own policy, the recently released report said. 
In a strongly worded written reply, the district said it "takes exception" to the findings, although it did not defend the lack of competitive bidding for the contracts. 
"Your auditor took no note of the fact that the district had used this same vendor continuously for several years before that particular board member took office," said the written reply. Timothy Heidrich was a board member during the time in question, 2008 and 2009, according to the audit. 
The district did not return calls for comment Thursday. 
The audit said it appears the district "was attempting to circumvent bidding requirements" in previous years by awarding the same two companies separate landscaping and snow removal contracts that, when combined, exceeded the $20,000 threshold for public bidding. 
Districts get into this kind of trouble when they don't have commissioners with business experience, said <a href="/topics/Michael_Flynn">Michael Flynn</a>, a <a href="/topics/Manorville%2C_NY">Manorville</a> fire commissioner who said he was speaking as a taxpayer. "All special districts should have a number of outsiders, people not on the inside," he said. "Nepotism has no place whatsoever" in fire district business. 
The comptroller's report also warned of a lack of oversight of the district treasurer, resulting in violations of district policy requiring written permission from a commissioner for overtime, and a lack of time records for some employees. In one instance, a mechanic was paid $489 for 8.5 hours of overtime in April 2009, when his attendance record said he worked 0.5 hours of overtime. The district said he was paid extra for working on a holiday. 
"Although the treasurer told us that she was instructed to calculate overtime in this manner by her predecessor, other employees who worked on the holiday did not receive an overtime payment for holiday time earned," the report said. The district replied that the mechanic's overtime pay was appropriate, and "the board remains adamant that all overtime is preapproved by a commissioner, whether your auditors found evidence of such pre-approval or not." 
Auditors also said the district collected nearly $6,000 in rental fees for use of its catering hall, and gave the money to the fire department's recreation fund instead of depositing it as mandated by law in district accounts with taxpayer funds. 
The district contends the money paid was the cost of maintaining and cleaning the hall. 
"The board and the department have reached an accommodation by which the department agreed to undertake the above tasks as a fundraising activity," the district wrote. In 2003, the Coram Fire District built <a href="/topics/Long_Island%2C_NY">Long Island</a>'s biggest firehouse: a $7.7-million, 39,000-square-foot structure, with ornate moldings, spacious offices and a gym with tiki bar. Its annual budget was $5.3 million in 2009, the audit said. 
&nbsp; 
<h4>Some of the audit's findings</h4> 
No bidding 
&nbsp; 
The brother of a commissioner got contracts for landscaping and snow removal without competitive bidding. 
Closer eye 
The district treasurer worked without oversight, and the district should segregate those duties. 
Other fund 
Money raised by renting the recreation hall was given to the department members for a recreation fund, not to the district's accounts. 
Competition 
The district did not competitively bid many professional services contract, although that is not mandated by law. 
High tech 
The district should implement a technology policy to secure its computer systems.

Suffolk

LICORA09

State audit slams Coram Fire District bidding policies

For 28 years, Richard Prudente's days were a dull parade of loading docks and triplicate bills of lading. But his nights and weekends were spent amid sirens and smoke. 
The export business paid well enough, but volunteering with the Huntington Manor Fire Department was more rewarding. 
In 1980, he plucked a small boy from a blazing home at Christmastime. In 1994, he saved a man from burning to death in a car wreck. And in 2003, not long after he retired from his day job, he risked his life to pull two people from the smoky second-story bedroom of an adult group home. 
Arriving directly from home that July 3 morning, he scrambled unprotected up a neighbor's rickety ladder and through a window. He quickly handed off a terrified woman to a fellow volunteer, then took a deep breath and crawled into the smoke. 
It took two trips back to the window for air before his hands brushed against a heavy-set, incoherent man clinging to the leg of a bed. Unable to budge him, the room growing hotter, Prudente gathered one last breath of fresh air, then dived back in to wrench the man free and muscle him toward waiting volunteers. Just as they all hit the lawn, the house exploded in flames. Prudente shielded the victim with his own body. 
"Anyone else in my fire department would have done the same thing," said Prudente, 51, who shared a state firefighter-of-the-year award with two other volunteers for the rescue. "That's the kind of people I associate with everyday. It's a good feeling." 
Newcomers to <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> are often startled to learn that one of the nation's most affluent regions has left a basic public safety responsibility in the hands of unpaid residents who answer calls for help just because they want to. 
About 20,000 Long <a href="/topics/New_York_Islanders">Islanders</a> provide fire-and-rescue services for the benefit of the remaining 2.7 million, and they are intensely proud of the work they do. They are the ones, the saying goes, who are running into the burning building when everyone else is running out. The fire service dominates volunteers' leisure hours and comes to shape their identities, so much so that many have come to see themselves as a breed apart, misunderstood by those outside their circle. 
Keeping tradition alive 
Firefighters, whether paid or volunteer, are indeed different, says <a href="/topics/Robert_Scott">Robert Scott</a>, a clinical psychologist with the Los Angeles Fire Department who has studied the personalities of emergency workers. As a group, they are action-oriented, resilient risk-takers, generally traditional in their thinking and conservative in their values, who find powerful gratification in helping others in crisis. 
"They want to be there when things are not going right, and they feel like they have the skills and abilities and knowledge to make things right," Scott said. "... It's a very deep need that gets filled." 
The firefighters themselves often admit they only dimly understand the complicated mix of habit, tradition, emotional need and selflessness that drives them. Some talk about the thrill of saving a life and the deadly beauty of fire itself. Others value the fellowship and social ties they have found in their firehouse, and still others say they just want to help people. 
"It's a question you could never, ever answer," said Edward Lutz, chief of the Elmont Fire Department. "What type of person runs into a burning building for no pay to try to save someone's life and property?" 
<a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a>'s volunteers suffer hundreds of injuries and a dozen or so deaths on duty each year, but that does not seem to deter them. 
Lutz, 40, a retired city police officer who won a medal of valor this year for rescuing a construction worker shocked by a 7,500-volt power line, called himself an "adrenaline junkie," but said there's more to it than that. 
"It's a sense of accomplishment. You are doing something positive. The way the world is today ... it's a dying tradition." 
That tradition goes straight back to the founding fathers and the ethic of civic responsibility that has been a cherished source of national pride. <a href="/topics/Benjamin_Franklin">Benjamin Franklin</a> founded the first volunteer fire company, and George Washington, <a href="/topics/Thomas_Jefferson">Thomas Jefferson</a> and <a href="/topics/Paul_Revere">Paul Revere</a> were among many early patriots who were volunteer firefighters. 
Though it remains a mostly blue-collar, male fraternity, the firefighting tradition on Long Island brings together bus drivers and judges, cops and bankers, highway workers and politicians. Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato was an Island Park firefighter for five years; Suffolk District Attorney <a href="/topics/Thomas_Spota">Thomas Spota</a> fought fires in Garden City Park as a young man; and Suffolk County Sheriff Alfred Tisch served a decade in Setauket. 
For the privilege of belonging to a firehouse, volunteers must swear an oath to protect the lives and property of residents. It may send Bay Shore firefighters out into a blizzard with shovels to clear driveways for the elderly; spur a Huntington Manor fire chief to give a lift to a panicked bride when floods block her from getting to the church on time; or drive Copiague volunteers to abandon their annual picnic and wade through shoreline marshes when they learn a boater is missing. 
"That's the way Long Island is," said Michael Pastore, 39, a former Huntington Manor chief. "It showed through the wildfires, and it showed through 9/11 when we went in to help in the city. Whatever's asked of us, we do, big or small." 
Paying it forward 
The volunteers' work is more valuable to their community precisely because they are not paid for it, believes Jeff Spencer, a security guard and Hempstead volunteer firefighter who teaches schoolchildren about fire safety. 
"When you tell these kids you volunteer and what volunteer really means," he said, "they're taken aback." 
He likens the volunteer example to the experiment in altruism depicted in the movie "Pay it Forward." 
"You do something good for three people, and they do something good for three people, and you keep it going ... We show them that somebody cares about them, and that there are still heroes in this world." 
Elmont builder Charlie Gonzalez, 44, says he joined for the excitement but now finds volunteering a form of relaxation. A retired police officer, he answered 384 fire calls last year and said that, compared to policing, this kind of public safety work is "like a therapy" because people are always glad to see firefighters arrive. 
"I didn't join the fire department to get rewarded for anything; I do it to reward myself," he said. "It's personal rewards, of doing good for somebody ... It's more satisfying because I'm not paid. I get up in the middle of the night because I want to, because when my radio goes off, it sounds like somebody is in need of something." 
'No better feeling' 
For many, it's a simple sense of duty. 
Elizabeth Kelly, 40, a Pace University administrator and trained lifeguard, grew up spending barefoot summers in the 400-home Fire Island community of Saltaire, where her family had a beach house and everybody pretty much knew everyone. Whenever the alarm sounded, she and the other kids were drawn to the firehouse. As they grew up, and some of them began to join, "It just hit me at some point that I was very capable." She's been a Saltaire volunteer for about 20 years now, answering alarms under the leadership of chiefs she used to baby-sit. 
"I can't imagine hearing that alarm going off and not being helpful," she said. " ... This is my hometown that I love." 
Others confess to what may be the biggest open secret of the volunteer fire service: the pleasure to be had working with all those shiny trucks and bright lights. 
Prudente, the Huntington Manor volunteer, recalled a boyhood spent pretending to be a fireman as he rode his bike, racing to the firehouse whenever the siren sounded to watch the trucks pull out. 
"My wife always asks me when I'm going to grow up, and I say never -- a lot of the guys' wives feel the same way," he said. "We're just big boys with bigger toys now." 
Yet volunteers also say youthful motives have a way of deepening the longer they serve. 
The firehouse was a second home for Floral Park Asst. Chief Frank Wakely, a chief's son who grew up playing ball with other volunteers' kids. When they turned 18, those kids joined the department so they could speed around in souped-up trucks on its tournament racing team, the Doodlebugs. Between the racing and emergency runs, "you were at the firehouse all the time," he said. " ... It was a great bunch of guys." 
The habit stuck. Twenty-five years older now, and working as a trucking manager for Federal Express, Wakely still finds a second home at the firehouse, but now he's the one sorting the mail and encouraging the kids. He has come to appreciate the serious responsibilities they all share, and has gotten trained as an emergency medical technician. 
"Of all the guys that were on the drill team, I'm the last to become chief," he said. 
Whether they wear fire gear or ride the ambulance, whether they are plumbers or lawyers, volunteers who have helped save someone's life tend to describe it as one of the defining experiences of their lives, sustaining their commitment through years of mundane duties. 
"Pulling somebody out of a building -- there is no better feeling," said Tom Foley, 49, a former Garden City chief. 
Bringing somebody back from the dead is right up there. Prudente was at the Huntington Manor firehouse on the afternoon of June 3 this year when a passing motorist suddenly crashed into a tree just up the street. The volunteers drove over and discovered his heart had stopped. They stretched him out right there in the middle of New York Avenue and began taking turns giving him CPR and a series of shocks with a defibrillator. For a long five minutes, there was nothing. Finally, Prudente detected a pulse. After they loaded the man into an ambulance, the volunteers hugged and went home ecstatic. 
"I told my wife and kids, I said, 'What a great day I had today,' " he recalled. He hears the man is doing fine now. "Not too many people get to make that much of a difference."

nyf-invols

A drive to make things right

Q: Who is in charge of my fire department? 
During fire emergencies, it's the chief of each department. The chief and several assistants are elected, usually to one-year terms, by the volunteers. 
Q: What about after the fire has been put out? 
That depends on where you live. 
One-hundred-twenty-two of <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>'s 179 fire departments are administered by fire districts, independent units of state government whose unsalaried commissioners are directly elected by their residents. They approve officers, set policies, mete out discipline and collect property taxes. Three <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> departments are administered by water and fire districts, which operate similarly to fire districts. 
Thirty-one departments are part of villages and two are city fire departments. Though mostly volunteer, these are run like other village and city departments. 
Twenty fire departments are independent, not-for-profit corporations that sell service under contract to towns and villages. These corporations own their firehouses and trucks. Their boards are elected by their volunteer members. 
And one Fire Island fire department, Point O'Woods, is run by a private association of property owners. 
Q: Who owns the trucks and the buildings? 
Usually villages, cities and fire districts own all the buildings and equipment used by their volunteer fire departments for emergency response, while incorporated fire departments own their own buildings and equipment. But there are a few exceptions in older departments where fire companies themselves own their buildings. 
Q: What does my contribution to the fire department's annual fundraiser pay for? 
Extras, mostly. State law provides for districts to raise taxes covering just about everything needed for public safety purposes, including the buildings, equipment, insurance and training costs, as well as annual dinners and refreshments served after meetings and emergencies. Funds donated to the department or one of its companies may pay for things like embroidered department jackets, outings, parties and other recreational activities; supplemental insurance, pension or death benefits beyond what the district provides; and extra training or travel at the chief's discretion. 
Q: Do fire departments have any other sources of money besides property taxes and donations? 
<a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> State also delivers money to benefit firefighters in the form of a 2 percent tax on certain fire insurance policies. About $10.2 million was distributed to Long Island fire departments and chartered benevolent associations last year.

nyf-inqna

A primer on LI firehouses

They laugh every time they tell the story, and they have been telling it for 17 years. Roslyn Highlands Fire Chief James McCann pulls up to an apartment house fire one afternoon in 1988. Smoke pouring out the windows. Crowd in the street. His men swarm the building front and back; they force the door of the burning apartment and enter. Then a voice pierces the curtain of smoke; it belongs to John Ceriello, one of his most eager young firefighters. "Hey, Jamie! There's somebody in here!" Telling it again, McCann's face arranges itself the way Abbott's used to look when Costello was trying his patience. "Well, then why don't you bring 'em on out?" he bellows, leaving out the language that gave such a shudder to the old ladies watching from the curb that day. Telling it, McCann breaks up all over again. They can laugh about it because of how the story ends: Ceriello and his partner save an old woman, and then Ceriello goes back in and puts out the fire. Since then, the two men have shared a bond they don't bother trying to explain, though they disagree about almost everything else these days. McCann, 50, is the Highlands president now, while Ceriello has moved on to become a lieutenant in the <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> Fire Department. McCann is fighting to protect his membership from all kinds of looming threats -- alarms up, roster down, rising complaints about spending and merger negotiations with the fire company next door. Ceriello, 43, a second-generation Highlands firefighter, has become convinced that it is long past time for the hometown department he loves to go paid. Each knows everything the other is going to say. "I guarantee in the end it would be cheaper," insists Ceriello, now an honorary member, "and even if it's not cheaper, you're guaranteeing a crew in front of your door that knows what to do. Not the baker, the plumber, the off-duty cop. Not my father, my 75-year-old father, who shouldn't be on the rig at all. Not the high school kid who just ran down from the high school. This has nothing to do with the dedication of the individuals. It has everything to do with the nature of living on <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>." These arguments don't get far with McCann. "That's a great story coming from a guy that probably knew nothing about anything to do with firematics until he joined here," he scoffs. Long <a href="/topics/New_York_Islanders">Islanders</a> get good service at bargain prices from their volunteer departments, in part because they have so many firehouses, McCann believes. "If they went to a paid situation, who would be the one to give up their firehouse?" McCann says. "... That's why I don't see it happening during my lifetime ... It's really not an issue at this point." How can the debate about the future of Long Island's fire departments be anything but touchy? For people like McCann and Ceriello, the quarrel is all in the family. The younger man is a firehouse brat, a former chief's nephew, son of one of the department's most senior members, who keeps coming back even after moving to <a href="/topics/Brooklyn">Brooklyn</a> from Roslyn Heights to do things like teach a ropes course, march in the centennial parade, or help run a poker night. Roslyn, Ceriello says, is "where my mother and father were born ... I'll always respect it as the place I learned to apply a trade ... It's very near and dear to my heart." McCann, by his own account, was a "wild" high school kid who found a sense of direction in the Highlands department. He was soon the chief, helping direct rescue efforts after an Avianca Airlines jet crashed in Cove Neck in 1990. He has since devoted himself to maintaining the department's traditions and spirit through rapidly changing times, including hiring the first employee, who helps answer fire calls. "You hear about the brotherhood in the city and how strongly they feel about each other?" McCann asks. "Well, this is what I've done for my entire adult life." That, Ceriello says, is why it's so hard to talk about all of this. "I'm attacking his life -- of course he's going to defend it and be mad about it," he says. " ... There is an ostrich, head-in-the-sand mentality when it comes to where the volunteerism is going. "... In an area as heavily populated as Nassau County, you can't guarantee a fire engine in front of your house with a crew in five minutes? You can't guarantee that?" McCann says he doesn't know his department's response time -- it averages 8 minutes 8 seconds -- but scoffs at the challenge. "Five minutes? He can guarantee that any place in New York City?" (New York's engines averaged 4 minutes and 35 seconds in September). Roslyn Highlands doesn't send out an engine until it has at least six people aboard, he says; the city rolls with fewer. And remember where Ceriello came from. "Our training and the expertise he gained here is what directed him towards that career," McCann notes. The debate pretty much ends there. The two men would rather talk about other things anyway when they meet, to bust chops or compare notes on solid-bore nozzles. "He was a very good chief," Ceriello says of McCann. "He was a good member," McCann says of Ceriello. " ... He and I have a history together."

nyf-inspot13

Heated debate: Brother vs. brother

Long Island has an abundance of firehouses, but they are not always where they're most needed. Stewart Manor's firehouse protects an area so small, it doesn't include the homes across the street. Its area along the <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a>-Queens border is so thick with fire departments that a burning home on some streets there could have pumpers from 13 different firehouses at the curb within three minutes if need be. But blazes in the $2 million Gold Coast homes on Laurel Hollow's Ridge Road have an average of 12 minutes to burn unchecked before firefighters can race from their nearest station, 41/2 miles away. Overall, there are about twice as many firehouses as called for under national insurance standards, a Newsday computer analysis found. The imbalance is most pronounced in Nassau County. Almost 60 percent of the residents there have three or more fire stations within the 11/2-mile drive of their homes recommended in the standards -- and 6 percent of residents have none within that distance. While just 14 percent of Suffolk County residents have three or more stations within range, the analysis found, many residents in the Babylon and Patchogue areas have anywhere from five to seven firehouses that close. And 19 percent of the county's population has no fire station within 11/2 miles, including the rural <a href="/topics/East_End">East End</a> and wealthy <a href="/topics/North_Shore">North Shore</a> communities such as Lloyd Harbor. 'Does it really make sense?' In the areas that have more than enough firehouses, though, boundaries between agencies' territories mean that residents may not get the benefit of that abundance, waiting for an engine from their home department even though another department's firehouse may be closer. "You have to ask yourself, does it really make sense to maintain all this extra equipment and real estate?" asks Stewart Manor Mayor Joseph Troiano. "Do we need all these firehouses?" If you plot the location of Nassau's 176 firehouses on a map, a clump of dots almost obscures Merrick Road near Lynbrook and Rockville Centre, and another cluster blooms in the Floral Park area. But much of northern Oyster Bay Town, the tony part, is blank. People in Upper Brookville and East Norwich are among the 6 percent of Nassau's residents who have no firehouses within a 1 1/2-mile drive. On the other hand, Lynbrook, a village of just two square miles, has six firehouses, and neighboring Rockville Centre has another six. If a fire broke out near the corner of South Park Avenue and Riverside Drive near the border between the two villages, at least 17 fire stations, including seven from other departments, are within the 11/2 miles called for in insurance industry standards. Once-coveted memberships "The public loves it," said Lynbrook Mayor Eugene Scarpato. "Why would we cut one out when they're volunteers? They don't get paid, other than the little perks that they get. Why would we want to cut that? Well, you might say we could do without one. I don't know. I've never tried. I wouldn't try it and why should I?" One explanation volunteers offer for the imbalance is that wealthier areas are so thinly populated that there is limited value in building fire stations there. Where the volunteers were Another reason, they acknowledge, is that many firehouses were built where the volunteers were. Volunteer memberships were once so coveted in southern Nassau that would-be firefighters incorporated new companies one after the other, jockeying for territories to serve, explained former Lynbrook Chief Michael Chiaramonte, a national authority on retaining volunteers. It's a common pattern throughout the Northeast, where firehouses were often built by private, incorporated fire companies without much government input or planning. The location of stations often has had more to do with what properties were available, the cost and who owned them, rather than strategic planning, said Carroll Buracker, a <a href="/topics/Virginia">Virginia</a>-based fire consultant. The Melville Fire District ignored a 1997 study it had commissioned from another consultant who had advised it to build a fourth station in the southwest corner of the district, home to large office parks and warehouse distribution centers but no firehouse. Instead, the district built one northeast of its headquarters on land that the consultants had recommended it sell as surplus. Developer Alvin Benjamin had given the district $1 million to pay for that firehouse at Old Country Road and <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> Avenue, which is across from his new subdivision, The Greens at Half Hollow. If you build it ... You have to build fire stations where the members are, not the calls for help, explained Melville Commissioner Salvatore Silvestre. "We don't have personnel down at the south end of the district," he said. "We built a firehouse on the south end of the district and it was unmanned, so now it's just a storage area for us. Now what? Build another one? For nobody coming? Doesn't make sense, does it?" Once a firehouse is built, it can be very hard to close. "In some cases, there's a long history where the father, the grandfather and the great-grandfather were part of a volunteer fire department," Buracker said. "When anyone talks about moving those or phasing them out ... sometimes the emotions get in the way." William Swift, a trustee of the Glenwood Landing Fire Department and former chairman of the Nassau fire commission, says residents wouldn't stand for closing firehouses, either. "If you were to close down firehouses on Long Island, you'd have the same problem as the mayor of New York -- you'd have people complaining," Swift said, referring to the lingering bitterness over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's closure of three firehouses two years ago. "If you think about people's safety and protection, the more firehouses, the better." No guarantees But having plenty of firehouses nearby is no guarantee of rapid service because of district boundaries. If a building in 100 block of Wantagh Avenue in Levittown were to burn, help would not come from the nearest Levittown firehouse, a quarter-mile away, because those buildings fall within the Wantagh Fire District. Instead, Wantagh would send an engine from its nearest station three miles distant and only ask for help from Levittown if it couldn't raise its own crew. Such help is referred to as mutual aid, and agreements negotiated among agencies vary. Some automatically respond to calls in their neighbors' territory, but most must wait to be asked for help because of the strong value departments place on their independence. If volunteers are slow to answer a call for help, it scarcely matters how many firehouses are nearby. Lynbrook's Hendrickson Avenue residents, surrounded by four of the village's own fire stations and nine from other jurisdictions, waited an average of 10 minutes for help in 2003 and 2004, according to county dispatch records. Eight of those minutes were waiting for volunteers to assemble a crew.

nyf-inmap

Fire protection uneven

A volunteer may train his entire life for a chief's duties, only to pass his term in office facing nothing more dangerous than a flaming Dumpster. Still, you never know. Eddie Koehler, 43, a deputy chief in Lawrence-Cedarhurst, was hosting friends for dinner last fall when his pager went off with news of an accident at Rockaway Turnpike and Peninsula Boulevard. A wrecked Volvo sat in the intersection with someone inside. Further up was a smashed Buick, the driver apparently pinned. The stench of petroleum filled his lungs. An overturned tanker carrying 12,500 gallons of gasoline lay sprawled on its side in a parking lot between an animal hospital and a condominium complex. Gasoline pooled from the wreckage and trickled toward storm drains. A plume of smoke curled up from the engine. Overhead, he could see the condo residents at their windows, watching with concern. He looked up at the electric power lines and thought about the high-pressure gas main he knew was running right below his feet. It was, in short, a dozen catastrophes waiting to happen. The chief was on vacation. So it was up to Koehler to step into the role of incident commander, something he'd studied for one way or another since he became a volunteer at age 18. Scarcely pausing for breath, he arranged for help from <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> police, the <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City Office of Emergency Management, the U.S. Coast Guard, the American Red Cross, the ASPCA and more than 30 other agencies. Koehler earns his living as a city cop stationed in the Rockaways. "I'm a nobody," he said with a laugh. But under state law, wherever there is a fire or the danger of a fire, the local fire chief has authority over the scene and every agency that responds to it. So those who came to tackle the would-be disaster that night followed Koehler's orders with ready deference. "Yes, chief, nobody's going to come back into the area unless you tell us," said the Nassau police inspector. "Chief, where do you want us?" asked the crew on the Port Authority crash-rescue truck. Under Koehler's direction, an army of volunteer and paid emergency workers labored all night to secure the scene, treat the injured, shut down utilities and evacuate 135 people who lived within a 2,500-foot radius, borrowing the facilities of the Lawrence School District for those who needed a place to sleep. Working through a thunderstorm that washed away their blanket of fire-retardant foam, they pumped out the remaining fuel from the tanker and cleaned up the spill with no further injuries, no fires and no harm to the pets next door. Koehler, now the chief, said that having local volunteers in charge the way he was that night is a good financial deal for residents, but the benefits go much further. "You're getting people that live in the community, that know the community, that care more about the community that they live in. It's home." With volunteers, he said, "you get the attitude of, 'Not on my watch. Not in my town. It's not going to happen here.'"

nyf-inspot14

Preventing a calamity

When Long Island fire officials go shopping for new trucks, New York's bidding laws are supposed to make sure that taxpayers pay the lowest price possible by encouraging competition among manufacturers. But a Newsday review of bid documents in a sample of 26 <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> fire truck purchases over the past 10 years found that's not how the system works: In at least 21 of the transactions, bid specifications appeared to have been written by the company that later won the contract. In 15 of the 26 sales, only one company submitted a bid, and in the remaining 11 deals, eight went to someone other than the low bidder. This is no coincidence, several Long Island dealers and fire officials said. Volunteers and commissioners routinely rely on dealers to write the highly technical specifications for the trucks they want to buy. "If the customer likes your truck, they're going to let you write the spec for them, and realistically, nobody else should bid," said Earl Robinson, a dealer for American LaFrance who has sold fire trucks on Long Island for more than 30 years. "In layman's terms, if you like a <a href="/topics/Mercury_Sable">Mercury Sable</a>, there's no sense in going to the <a href="/topics/Honda">Honda</a> dealer." 'Already been sold' For example, the Bellmore Fire District's 67-page specifications for a 1,500-gallon-per-minute custom pumper, issued in 2000, spelled out dimensions, materials, make and model of every part and assembly, down to bright nut covers and hubcaps on the <a href="/topics/Alcoa%2C_Inc.">Alcoa</a> polished aluminum wheels. The lone bidder was R.D. Murray, whose winning bid of $398,860 mirrored Bellmore's specifications almost exactly in wording, typeface and layout. "They sit down with the committee ... and the spec gets written based around what you're looking for," said the district's facility manager, John Fabian. " ... It's been that way for years." Similarly, when the Syosset Fire District bought a pumper in 1999, the only bidder was Pierce Fire Apparatus Co., which won the $308,900 contract. Commissioner Peter Morley told his board, according to meeting minutes, that when he asked another salesman why he hadn't bid, the salesman replied that it wasn't worth the time: "They felt it was someone else's spec." That, dealers say, is the key to selling trucks. "By the time the spec's written, the truck's already been sold," said one dealer who has participated in hundreds of Long Island truck bids but asked not to be identified for fear of harming his business. "If a dealer knows there's no other bidders, the truck costs $500,000 but he knows they have a budget of $750,000 -- hey, this is <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a>." Five companies bid on the East Northport Fire District's "eight-man custom pumper" in 1995, but it awarded the contract to Pierce for $238,400, even though two bids had come in lower. Commissioners defended the award, saying the lower bids had differed from the specifications in several areas. Dealer balks at process Their decision drew a bitter letter of protest from KME dealer James B. Duncan, who had bid $229,340 and said he'd met every key requirement. He said KME provided more heat in the cab and more total battery power than the specifications called for but configured in a different way. "The specifications published were 100 percent Pierce specifications, totally proprietary, where only one (1) bidder could bid, which according to our counsel is a violation of the General Municipal Law," Duncan wrote. When contacted last week, he said he had nothing to add to what was in the letter. The district's counsel wrote back directing Duncan not to communicate further with commissioners, and Pierce's dealer delivered the truck. Michael Hanratty, president of Firematic Supply Co. of Bohemia, the only dealer for Pierce trucks on Long Island, said in an interview that while he writes specifications for fire agencies to use, officials are free to mix sections he's written with those written by other dealers. Most truck components are available through other manufacturers, he explained, making competition possible even when a particular dealer writes the specifications. Getting involved early In several of the cases reviewed by Newsday, the eventual winner of the bid had been working with fire officials months before the specifications were issued by the agency. When the Smithtown Fire District opened bids for a ladder truck in 1999, there was just one bidder: the Sutphen Corp., which had met with the board and the "Hook and Ladder Truck Committee" nearly a year earlier. "It's almost like a catch-22 here because you're looking for a specific vehicle that's going to service your needs and then you put out to bid and all you get back is the one company," said James Kirby, Smithtown's district secretary. "So, we've done everything above board and legitimately here." When Babylon Village was looking for a 95-foot aerial platform ladder truck six years ago, only one company bid: Sutphen, whose salesman had "worked diligently" with the department and gotten specifications "well in advance of the village publishing the bid notice," according to a department letter. Babyon Mayor Ralph Scordino said he wasn't in office when the ladder truck was purchased, and the village recently threw out a bid for an ambulance because there was only one bidder. State law requires bidders on all purchases over $10,000 to sign a "non-collusion" statement certifying that they have not attempted to discourage others from bidding. "Although the fact that specifications are drafted by a potential bidder does not necessarily mean that the specifications will be tailored for that firm to the exclusion of others, ... such specifications might at least be considered suspect," the state comptroller's office has warned in several opinions issued since 1980. Some fire districts appear to strive for an open process. Board minutes show that when the St. James Fire District was shopping for a ladder truck in 1997, it amended its specifications that appeared to be written by Pierce so another company could bid. Pierce submitted the low bid and won anyway.

nyf-inbid

Seeing red over the big rig bid process

Around the firehouse, they call him Ogre. They've been calling him that since they were in the fifth grade together, when Matt Bakersky had an outsized frame and a fearsome reputation on the lacrosse field. Now he's all grown up at 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, and a lieutenant in the Floral Park Fire Department. He pays the bills with part-time jobs, helping at his uncle's masonry business, running an ambulance for the Baldwin Fire Department and tending bar at Charlie Bullfrogs on <a href="/topics/Jericho2">Jericho</a> Turnpike, a firefighter hangout in Floral Park. He hates music, isn't big on books and reads Fire Engineering magazine for pleasure. "You tell Matt, 'Take the window out,' and Matt will take the window out," said Floral Park Deputy Chief Frank Wakely. "Think of an <a href="/topics/NFL">NFL</a> lineman -- they are not in on the glory, but if one screws up their job, the quarterback gets sacked ... He likes to fly under the radar and get things done." Put right to the test Last fall, Ogre joined in a delicate, synchronized lifesaving mission as the driver of Floral Park's new aerial platform ladder truck. "That was my first call driving it," Bakersky, 26, said. "I had just got qualified the week before." Two construction workers were trapped under a collapsed roof on Vanderbilt Avenue. One man was paralyzed, his spine smashed by a fallen joist. The other was suffering crushing chest pains, struggling to breathe and slipping into shock. Getting them out posed a problem. Plywood barriers surrounded the house. There was no stairway to their floor. <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a>'s evacuation helicopter was tied up. It was the perfect scenario for the newest aerial ladder truck, valued as a stable platform for firefighters to use power tools on a roof or remove victims from tricky spots. Doing his part Volunteers need no special license to drive fire trucks. In Floral Park, "chauffeur" candidates with clean driving records take 20 hours of training, starting with an obstacle course in the parking lot at nearby Belmont Park, followed by real-world practice rounding corners on the narrow residential streets. "Everything is safe driving," Bakersky said. "The truck is 51 feet long, so in geometrics it's a four-foot swing ... You have to make sure no car is next to you when you make the turns, otherwise you will hit it." On that day last fall, Bakersky smoothly swung the 30-ton truck through the streets and into a spot in front of the house. He went to a console at the truck's rear, extending four outrigger jacks to carefully level the mammoth vehicle, then climbed up to yet another set of controls at the turntable that operates the boom. They were lucky that day: that yard was free of the low-hanging utility lines and tree branches that so often prevent the use of ladder trucks on suburban streets. Then, like a giant robotic cobra, the articulated steel boom glided up and out with two volunteers in its basket, bringing them to rest beside the injured men. One at a time the victims were lifted carefully and deposited on a neighbor's driveway. Within 48 minutes of the call for help, both were in hospital emergency rooms. They survived, although the man with the spinal injuries remains paralyzed. In Floral Park, the kind of place where elementary schoolmates grow up to be fire department buddies, Bakersky has been at home at the firehouse since he began training at age 15 under the guidance of his best friend's dad. His own dad died when he was 11. "I believe this community is very supportive of the Fire Department," Bakersky said. "You read in our paper ... people praising us for the rescues we do. If a lady's house goes on fire, she'll write a thank-you for a job well done ... "It makes you feel better, like it's worth it."

nyf-inspot15

He's always coming up big

For years, when Centerport's volunteer firefighters came around on their annual fund drive, Ann Fahlbusch says she wrote out checks of $100 or more, happy to support a vital community service. 
 
 But when Fahlbusch joined the department five years ago, she was startled to find where her donated dollars had been going. They went to the gun, baseball and fishing clubs, to white-water rafting trips upstate, to the <a href="/topics/Christmas">Christmas</a> eggnog party and to barbecues and banquets. 
 
 "They said, 'We tell the community as little as possible -- it just causes trouble,' " said Fahlbusch, who quit the department after two years and moved out of state. "I said, 'You guys got $71,000 in the month of December from the community, and you don't think they have a right to know what you use it for?' I gave $100 a year, and I thought I was helping fight a fire." 
 
 Social and fringe benefits 
 
 It's a common misconception in communities across <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> where fire department fundraising appeals often don't make clear where donations will go. 
 
 Fund-drive money is spent mostly on social and fringe benefits for volunteers, including tropical vacations, parties, takeout for department meetings, sports teams, beer, and extra insurance and death benefits, department records show. In rare instances, it has even gone to campaign contributions and, some volunteers say, strippers. At least some of these expenditures may violate the federal tax code, an Internal Revenue Service spokesman said. 
 
 Property taxes cover all spending that is directly related to firefighting, including the cost of equipping and training volunteers and feeding them at emergencies and at annual banquets. 
 
 Unlike most other <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> not-for-profit groups, volunteer fire departments don't have to file financial disclosure forms with the state attorney general, and only about a fifth of them file required federal tax returns that would allow the public to review how much they raise and how they spend it. Officials with the state firefighters' association say that's merely an oversight by busy people not fully aware of their responsibilities. 
 
 Centerport is one of the few departments that does, listing the expenditures Fahlbusch complained about. Department officials say they've nothing to hide. 
 
 "We have discussed it with people that ask at their doors," said Brian Mark, Centerport's department president. "We don't lie to the public. That's the last thing we would do." 
 
 Some vague appeals 
 
 Although no agency tallies donations raised by Long Island's 179 community fire departments, available tax returns and sampling of large departments suggest that most take in more than $25,000 each year, the threshold for filing charitable returns with the IRS. 
 
 In 2003, for example, Wantagh's fund drive brought in $233,000; East Meadow collected $171,000; Levittown, $150,000; Merrick, $184,000. None of these departments filed federal returns. 
 
 Some departments make plain in their solicitations how the money will be spent. 
 
 "While tax dollars pay for equipment, maintenance, dispatchers' salaries, fire hydrant rental and other operating expenses, many activities of the department are dependent on residents' donations," read a recent appeal from the Halesite Fire Department in Huntington. "Donations pay for athletic teams, insurance, death benefits, refreshments and community functions like our Blood Drive each August, the Fire Prevention Week Open House in October, and the Holiday party for fire district children in December." 
 
 Other appeals for support, though, are vague. 
 
 "We are the first responders to emergencies large and small, your donation makes it possible," read a recent fund drive letter from the West Sayville Fire Department, whose $1.9 million in tax revenue covers the year's expenses. 
 
 Some residents are annoyed by the confusion. 
 
 "The residents of this community are on the hook for millions for a bond issue to fund a new firehouse," said Dan Gasparek, an East Meadow man who was angered by repeated solicitations. "Where is this money going? ... For fire equipment? For big-screen TVs for the lounges inside the firehouse? For fishing trips? That's the question." 
 
 Keeping them happy 
 
 Some argue that the trips, parties and clubs are serving the public interest if they keep the volunteers happy and poised to answer calls. 
 
 In recent years, Hicksville's fire companies have traveled to the Poconos, <a href="/topics/Atlantic_City">Atlantic City</a>, <a href="/topics/Las_Vegas">Las Vegas</a>, <a href="/topics/Orlando">Orlando</a>, Cancun, the <a href="/topics/Dominican_Republic">Dominican Republic</a> and <a href="/topics/Canada">Canada</a>, funded by the charity of residents, records show. 
 
 "It doesn't bother me," said Hicksville resident Dawn Rose. "These people come into your house when it's on fire and risk their lives. Why can't they have a week in Canada?" 
 
 Officials in other fire departments share that view. 
 
 "We don't get paid for this," former New Hyde Park Chief Anthony Vaglica, whose members have traveled to <a href="/topics/Cozumel">Cozumel</a>, St. Maarten, the <a href="/topics/Bahamas">Bahamas</a> and the Grand Caymans, said of the firefighters' life. 
 
 "Anybody who would have a problem with it, maybe they should start getting up at 2, 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning from their nice warm bed when it's 10 degrees outside, and do what we do." 
 
 And when the Oceanside Fire Department's Terrace Hose &amp; Chemical Co. No. 3 celebrated its 75th anniversary with a 2003 cruise to Nova Scotia, the company paid each member's way. 
 
 "We saved up a long time for that," said ex-Chief Robert Bettes, who said the money came not from donations but from "savings." IRS returns for 2000 and 2001 show Terrace has income from investments as well as raffles and the annual fund drive. 
 
 IRS spokesman Kevin McKeon said, in general, fire departments must use donations "to serve the public purpose for which they are exempt," from taxes. IRS rules allow departments to provide facilities for rest and relaxation. 
 
 "But their primary purpose is to be out there putting out fires," McKeon said. "Funds should be used for the purchase of needed equipment and maintenance of the equipment ... It could lead to revocation [of a tax exemption] if it's determined that the organization is using public funds for the personal benefit of the members of the fire department." 
 
 As for resort travel spending, "I don't think there's any authorization for that under the code," he said. 
 
 Campaign donations 
 
 Some departments have used donations for political campaigns, even though IRS rules bar that. 
 
 The Mastic Beach Fire Department donated $900 to the failed campaign of Majority Leader Peter O'Leary (R-Moriches) this year. 
 
 But Mastic Beach Chief Jeff McGown said those payments were fees for a golf tournament fundraiser for O'Leary. 
 
 "The fundraising that the department does, that money can be used for anything," he said. "It's not a political thing ... We have guys that enjoy playing golf, and the money we have is our money to be spent how we want to, and we choose to spend some of it to play golf, and if it happens to be that Pete O'Leary reports it as a campaign fund that has nothing to do with us." 
 
 Entertainment money 
 
 One fire company, a former officer said, spent fund-drive money on adult entertainment. 
 
 The North Bellmore Fire Department's Company No. 1 has used donations to pay for strippers for the annual holiday party in recent years, two people associated with the department said. 
 
 Former North Bellmore firefighter Sophia Specht claimed in her sexual discrimination suit against the department that it dropped her from its rolls after she demanded that male volunteers stop bringing strippers and prostitutes into the firehouse. Specht received a confidential settlement last year, court records show. 
 
 "I was no longer willing to go door-to-door to ask the public for donations to spend on strippers and pornography," Specht said before the settlement. 
 
 The district's lawyer, John Roche, said Specht's claims weren't credible, but he also said that since someone else also told Newsday about the strippers, he would investigate. 
 
 "Sure they do have Christmas parties. Do I know exactly what happens at every Christmas party? If we get a complaint we act on it," he said. " ... This is going to precipitate me investigating further. We don't tolerate that kind of stuff here."

nyf-indona

Fundraising sweetens their pot

Jeff Spencer thought he could save a few windows if he joined the Hempstead Fire Department. "I always used to see the firemen going to people's houses, breaking windows and cutting the roof," said Spencer, 39. "Around here, you think, 'People don't have the money to repair the stuff.' I never understood why they did so much damage." But once he started training as a firefighter, Spencer learned those axes weren't trashing his neighbors' homes but working to save them, venting heat and smoke to stop the fire from spreading. Now, a decade after he first joined, Spencer has become the public face of the department, making countless appearances in schools and senior centers to explain who firefighters are and how they work. Visiting his daughter Cheyenne's third-grade class at Franklin Elementary School in the spring, Spencer asked the children where they would go if they discovered their house was on fire. The closet, kids often tell him, or under the bed. It's common, experienced firefighters say, for children to try to escape a fire by hiding from it, which makes rescuing them that much harder. On this day, one boy raised his hand to suggest that a bathtub with water might be a safe place. Spencer just smiled and offered the example of a hot dog. "You put it in a pot of water, the fire goes underneath it, boils the water and cooks the frank, right?" Fire safety education is especially important in Hempstead because the village has more serious fires than any other community in Nassau County. Though Hempstead's department has one of <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a>'s leanest budgets, undergoing further cuts from the village this year, it is also one of the most highly regarded. Ambitious young volunteers move or commute to the village just for the chance to work in a busy firehouse. Earlier this year, Spencer was honored for rescuing three victims of carbon-monoxide poisoning who had been overcome by fumes from a propane-powered generator while doing indoor renovations. But he finds the work with children especially fulfilling. "It's good to be in the mall and see a little kid walking with their parents and they say, 'Hey, Mommy, that's the fireman!' and you can tell it's making their day to say hi to me," Spencer said in an interview. "That's the best feeling in the world."

nyf-inspot16

Spotlight on a hero: Answering the call

Experienced firefighters often take the most pride in their "good stops," the small fires that get put out before they ever get big enough to make the news. For Saltaire firefighter Elizabeth Kelly, tamping down a smoldering patch of dune grass counts as a good stop. She has seen what ocean breezes can do with a stray spark in this Fire Island tinderbox of wood-shingled houses, dry brush and brittle boardwalk. Fires are few, and so are the volunteers in her summer community of 400 homes, whose owners may occupy them just a few weeks each year as a refuge from the workaday world. For Kelly, a Pace University administrator who grew up spending every summer on the barrier island and worked as a lifeguard in her younger years, volunteering with the fire department has been a natural part of hometown life. It comes with the annual hose test on the boardwalk, equipment drills on the pumper and stints at the dispatch console. There's also the annual parade, the centerpiece of the community's summer, and silly competitions like the races to put on fire gear, which she won two years in a row once. Many of her springtime afternoons were spent inspecting homes, reminding residents to put in smoke detectors and to clear dry brush from a three-foot radius of their homes, though that job is now assigned to a village fire marshal. And, of course, there are the emergencies. There were just 64 of them last year, but since they tend to be squeezed into a handful of summer weekends and must be handled among just 28 volunteers, fire duty has a way of dominating her time on the island. "You get the same five or six people who do a lot of work, who get everything done and get frustrated by it ... " Kelly, 40, said. "It's a constant love-hate thing; it's really a small thing, and everyone's either a neighbor or a brother or a sister or a former baby-sitter. We all really know each other. "When there's an emergency, things are great. But the requirements for training and for putting in your time can start to wear on people." So can the workload on what should be the most idyllic summer weekends, when short-term renters slam a shoulder in a wave or get too much sun and don't understand that the people surrendering an entire afternoon to drive them off the island do it for free. "My use of that island as a leisurely place, I recognize that's changed," said Kelly, whose year-round home is in <a href="/topics/Brooklyn">Brooklyn</a>. "My family says, 'We never see you!' " But there are pleasures, too, in the routines of membership, like helping run the annual Labor Day pancake breakfast, when the modest firehouse opens its doors to the community. Or stopping by now and then at Saltaire's firehouse to tidy up, have a beer and chew the fat with some of the no-nonsense older firemen who started the department and have steadied it through many changes. Saltaire's volunteers held a cocktail party last spring to attract new members. That may be what brought in three new women to volunteer as emergency medical technicians -- the department is now allowing recruits to skip the fire side of the training that Kelly had to master to join. And this year, neighboring Fair Harbor added some new medical volunteers, too. She's seen volunteers come and go, but this summer, the first one in a long time, didn't come with such a burnt-out feeling. "It's nice to have those new women around," she said. "I'm hopeful."

nyf-inhero17

Spotlight on a hero: Elizabeth Kelly

Suffolk County may be one of the more affluent places in the nation, but it's not a very good place to have a heart attack, a new analysis suggests. Out of 3,424 people who collapsed in cardiac arrest in <a href="/topics/Suffolk">Suffolk</a> over the last four years, only 71 were resuscitated and lived long enough to be released from the hospital, according to an analysis prepared for the county by <a href="/topics/Stony_Brook_University">Stony Brook University</a>. That is less than half the 5 percent odds of survival that the <a href="/topics/American_Heart_Association">American Heart Association</a> estimates as the national average. Because speedy intervention is accepted as the most important factor in saving a cardiac arrest patient, experts say Suffolk's poor survival rates highlight the human cost of its relatively slow emergency medical response, which has been a longtime target of reform efforts. The nation's best systems, such as <a href="/topics/Seattle">Seattle</a>, average survival rates as high as 25 percent. But of other U.S. areas for which studies have been published, only <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> and <a href="/topics/Chicago">Chicago</a> fared as poorly as Suffolk County, said Edward Stapleton, a professor of clinical emergency medicine at the university who co-authored the heart association's emergency cardiac-care manuals and guidelines. Only 1.4 percent of New York's cardiac arrest victims survived 10 years ago, but that average has improved to 2.2 percent since firefighters began carrying defibrillators on their engines, a new study has shown. Chicago's survival rate is 1.8 percent. "We're doing as well as the worst systems in the country," Stapleton said. "We're simply not getting there soon enough." Dr. Jeanne Alicandro, emergency medical director for the county health department, said the study is the first step to improving care. "One thing we do have going for us is that we're looking, because there are a lot of areas that aren't looking, that don't keep data at all," she said. "I think we're moving in the right direction." No comparable review has been performed in <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> County, because Nassau does not provide significant funding for medical supervision and quality improvement of emergency care, said John Hassett, who heads Nassau's regional EMS council. A rule of thumb published by the heart association holds that every minute that passes without intervention after cardiac arrest reduces the chances of survival by 7 to 10 percent. But newer studies have refined that understanding, showing dramatically higher survival rates among those who get defibrillation within four minutes and rapidly worsening hopes thereafter, said Dr. Robert Silverman, research director for the department of emergency medicine at <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park. "Optimally, you want to get defibrillation within four minutes or as close to four minutes as possible," he said. "The further out you go, the poorer the patient's chances." That may be why survival rates as high as 60 percent are found in some airports and casinos, where defibrillators and trained staff are close at hand and visitors are constantly monitored. The cities of New York and Chicago appear to suffer poor survival rates because it can take so long to get through lobbies, stairs and elevators from the street to the patient's side, researchers believe. Last year, Suffolk agencies took an average of 7 minutes, 13 seconds to deliver the first help of any kind to the doorstep of patients, even after being warned by dispatchers that they were responding to the most urgent cardiac and/or respiratory arrest calls, according to county records. And that average did not include the time spent processing the 911 call before the dispatchers summoned help, or the time it took crews to actually deliver a shock to the heart, Silverman noted. "That is a long response time, and I would say that if there was one system intervention likely to improve the outcome from cardiac arrest, it would be to reduce those response times," said Dr. Tom Aufderheide, a professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of <a href="/topics/Wisconsin">Wisconsin</a> and a national authority on emergency cardiac care. In Milwaukee County, for example, fire department first responders arrive within 2 to 3 minutes, Aufderheide said, and 10 to 11 percent of cardiac arrest patients survive. Stapleton said Suffolk is about to launch a campaign to teach volunteers new techniques in CPR because recent studies suggest it is key to survival for people who don't get emergency defibrillation within the first 5 minutes. "It really boils down to time: time from collapse to CPR and defibrillation," Stapleton said.

nyf-inbiz

Any delay can be fatal

Every Monday and Wednesday evening, Amagansett real estate agent Htun Han wolfs down supper and leaves home about 6 p.m. for an evening class in emergency medicine half an hour away in Sag Harbor. He gets home just in time for the 11 o'clock news. A volunteer critical-care EMT with the Amagansett Fire Department, Han responds to his neighbors' homes 24 hours a day and can shock a cardiac arrest victim to life, insert a breathing tube, start an intravenous line, treat an <a href="/topics/Asthma">asthma</a> attack and provide other urgent care before an ambulance arrives. <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> State requires emergency medical technicians to complete their recertification every three years. Han is taking the nine-month course for the seventh time. "I've got three loves in my life: my family, my work and my ambulance" corps, Han said. It was gratitude that got him hooked. Han, a marine biologist by training, is a volunteer because of his daughter Thuzar, who was born with profound, inevitably fatal birth defects 22 years ago. After a draining year at her hospital bedside, the family decided to bring her home, but they worried about how they could care for this fragile infant, whose life depended on heart monitors, oxygen concentrators and other electronic equipment, in a rural community where they knew few of their neighbors. Their doctor urged them to consult the local police, who sent them to see Mary Sweeting, the captain of the fire department's ambulance corps. She handed them her home number and urged them to call her anytime. "Don't worry," he said she told him. "Whatever we can do, we'll always be there to help." A couple of days after the Hans brought their daughter home, a fire started in the woods across from their house, filling the air with smoke and sirens. Was it more dangerous to flee or stick it out and hope? "The next thing I knew, there was a fire truck coming down the driveway," Han said. It carried a generator to keep his daughter's medical equipment running if the power went out. An ambulance soon was parked behind it, ready to whisk her to safety. A few weeks later, when Thuzar was settled in, Htun Han went back to see Mary Sweeting to ask how he could show his appreciation. "Without blinking an eye, she says, 'We need volunteers,'" Han recalled. Thuzar survived to be nearly 6, but Han's devotion to his volunteer service has only deepened, along with the satisfaction of being able to help his friends. "When you arrive at the scene and that person is Fred or John or David, and they open their eyes and say, 'Htun, it's you,' you can see a calm come over them right away." Most satisfying of all, though, is coming to the aid of a critically ill child. "Anything and everything can go wrong," he said, "and when things go right, you literally walk out of the ER as if you're floating on air."

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Spotlight on a hero: Htun Han

They call it Bryan's Fire. That was the March 2004 blaze that gave Huntington Manor volunteer Bryan Winzer the angry pink scar that rings his face in the precise shape of his firefighter's air mask. Winzer, who had just been hired as a city firefighter, had evacuated his volunteer company from the third floor of the worsening fire at Hickory Place and Fourth Avenue in Huntington Station. He was alone, making a final sweep for stragglers when it happened. Everything in the room spontaneously ignited; temperatures shot to around 1,200 degrees. Firefighters call it a flashover, and nothing survives for very long. Reeling with pain, Winzer stumbled toward the window, only to pitch head-first into a hole in the floor. He was stuck. Downstairs, departing firefighter Michael Bruno happened to cast a backward glance and noticed a hand dangling from the ceiling. Bruno, 30, owns a local business installing lawn irrigation systems. He volunteers, he says, because "I need to belong to a brotherhood." "Fireman down!" Bruno yelled that day. Getting Winzer and his bulky gear down through that flaming 16-inch hole in the ceiling is one of those things, Bruno and former Chief Michael Pastore say, that takes strength you didn't know you had. Winzer would need skin grafts for severe burns on his back, arm and stomach, but seven months later, Winzer was back at Pastore's side, wriggling through the rubble of a collapsed auto dealership on <a href="/topics/Jericho2">Jericho</a> Turnpike, where they raced a rapidly spreading fire to rescue a man trapped under a desk. He shrugged off the idea that once being burned would make him shy of such danger. "I volunteered seven years ago," said Winzer, 32. "When you say 'I do,' that's what it means." To his fellow volunteers, Winzer's return has proven something important about the power of their traditions. "It's a brotherhood, and it's another family," said Pastore, who repairs parking meters for Huntington Town. "We watch out for each other and we're there for each other so we can be there for the community. " ... Some people think we're crazy ... But when you join here, you know why. It's in your heart that you want to do this."

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Spotlight on a hero: Bryan Winzer

When it went shopping for a fire engine, ambulance or a tractor-trailer to carry their racing vehicles, the Syosset Fire District relied on then-Commissioner Ronald Geraci to guide them. As a professional fire truck dealer, Geraci knew all the ins and outs of these complex and costly purchases. The board routinely followed his advice -- even when he recommended one of his own company's trucks at a price $96,296 more than the next highest bidder and $116,590 more than the low bidder. Now, <a href="/topics/Nassau">Nassau</a> Chief Assistant District Attorney Patrick J. McCormack Jr. says his office is probing those sales. A former business partner alleged that one of the deals included a hidden commission for Geraci, even though he had told his fellow commissioners that he'd make nothing from it. "The district attorney's office has been investigating this situation up, down, sideways, back and forth, and has never found that a nickel went to Ron Geraci," said Stanley Kopilow, Geraci's criminal defense attorney whose firm is also representing Geraci in a defamation suit against his former partner. From fire trucks to computer software, from insurance to beer cozies, the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through the <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> fire service each year sustain a thriving mini-economy of businesses owned by volunteers themselves. Sometimes, these volunteers do business with their own agencies, interviews and a sampling of board minutes showed, raising questions about conflicts of interest. "These are things that just drive the public crazy when they hear about it," said Jeff Stonecash, professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School. "When you've got a foot in both camps and there's money to be made off the public-sector connection, boy, there's all the potential in the world for corruption." But it can be extremely difficult to tell which dealings are acceptable under the law and which are not. In Freeport, for instance, <a href="/topics/John_Maguire">John Maguire</a>, who was a fire chief from 2001 to April of this year, sold more than $65,000 worth of firefighting equipment and services to the village between 1999 and 2002. Of those 20 orders from Excelsior Fire Protection Inc., at least 15 were placed by village officials who were also members of the fire department. Eight of those orders came from Maguire's brother Raymond, who is the fire department's salaried administrator. Volunteers are exempt <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> State law bars officials in local government from preparing or approving contracts in which they have an interest, said Evan Davies, chairman of the temporary commission that drafted New York's ethics law. But while the rule applies to fire commissioners, volunteer firefighters and chiefs are exempt. And Raymond Maguire, who is a partner in another fire-related business with his brother, said he has no financial interest in Excelsior and noted that all of the orders were approved by the village's purchasing department. "If the chiefs or captain or somebody wants to purchase something, they submit it to my office, and I send it to purchasing," Raymond Maguire said. That office reviews the order, he said, to make sure "we're getting the best bang for the buck." Harrison J. Edwards, the village attorney, said there is also an oversight committee, "which reviews the equipment requests made by the fire department and then makes recommendations." Raymond Maguire said the fire department is still buying goods from his brother's company. John Maguire couldn't be reached for comment. In Nesconset, Arthur Rivers was the fire district's secretary-treasurer for 40 years until he became the assistant treasurer about three years ago. For more than 10 years, he was also Nesconset's insurance agent as a longtime partner and later president and 50 percent owner of Hometown Insurance Agency of Smithtown. Rivers said his agency also set up the district's pension program for its volunteers. "I think that it was just that I represented a better company," he said of how he got the contract. He disclosed his ties each year in letters to his board. "I don't approve anything and I never did," he said, noting that a state comptroller's opinion says that it is not a conflict of interest for treasurers to sell insurance to their own districts. And in Port Washington, the Flower Hill Hose Co. bought a pumper last year from truck maker KME. The Long Island dealer for KME is Chief Fire &amp; Rescue Apparatus , whose majority owner is James Duncan, a trustee of the hose company. Flower Hill is one of four not-for-profit volunteer companies that make up the Port Washington Fire Department, which contracts to protect the area. Duncan said that the pumper was bought straight from the manufacturer after a competitive bidding process, and he got no commission on the sale. "There is not a conflict of interest because it [Flower Hill Hose Co.] is a private corporation," he said. "They bid it out, even though they don't have to." The Nassau district attorney's office questioned him about the deal, Duncan said. McCormack said his office has closed the matter without taking action. Duncan said he was the dealer when the Atlantic Hook and Ladder Co. 1, another of the department's companies, bought a ladder truck and a rescue truck. But he said he won both contracts through competitive bidding. "If this was a fire district and I was a commissioner, I wouldn't be doing this because you can't do it, and I know it," he said. Questions about deal Former Syosset commissioner Geraci's troubles stem from his role in Syosset's effort to buy a new rescue truck. The truck was first put out to bid in May 2000, and two offers came in: one for $457,300 and another for $328,910. Instead of taking the low bid, Geraci persuaded the board to throw out both bids, minutes show. He and another commissioner "agreed to work with the truck committee" drafting new specifications. But when those were issued, the original low bidder, Amtech dealer Rick Dorfman, complained to Syosset that they were "tightly written in favor of one manufacture ... This is no longer an open set of specifications applicable for public bidding." Geraci was a dealer for Saulsbury, which specialized in trucks with stainless steel bodies of the type Syosset wanted and had bid on this second round of specifications. At $445,500, Saulsbury's bid was more than $116,000 higher than Amtech's, but Geraci urged accepting it anyway. "Commissioner Geraci explained in detail the advantages of purchasing the High-Angle Rescue apparatus from Saulsbury," the Oct. 9, 2000, Syosset board minutes show. Geraci made the motion to award the bid to Saulsbury and voted with the majority in favor. Kopilow, Geraci's attorney, said his client was simply recommending a truck widely recognized as the best available. After the vote, Geraci "stated for the minutes that although he is a Saulsbury dealer, he in no way or form would receive any commissions or rewards from Saulsbury . . . for the purchase." But two years later, an estranged business partner wrote the district to say Geraci had actually taken a $16,000 commission for the high-angle truck. Geraci denied it and produced a letter from Saulsbury backing him. But another more senior official at Saulsbury's parent company, Federal Signal Corp., wrote the board to say that a $16,000 dealer commission was built into the truck's price. The company attached a copy of the contract that listed a line item for a $16,000 commission. The district has called the accusation "groundless." Geraci, Kopilow said, has stopped selling fire trucks and now runs a catering concern.

For some volunteers, business is good

Union leader Harold Schaitberger makes no effort to conceal the place he think volunteer firefighters should hold in America today. In tax-poor rural areas, the president of the International Association of Firefighters says, they play an "honorable role." Beyond that, he sees little use for them. "In this new century of ours, anyplace that has any kind of population density, any kind of industry and certainly the financial resources ... is there any excuse for having people volunteering to provide such a critical public-safety service?" Schaitberger said. " ... We're not going to have volunteer police forces. We're not going to have volunteer teachers." The 267,000-member union has sought to increase its membership in an in-your-face campaign targeting volunteers as one of its main obstacles. Union locals have enforced a clause in the association's constitution forbidding members to also serve as volunteers, triggering legal battles from <a href="/topics/Toronto">Toronto</a> to Washington, D.C. That clause hasn't always sat well with members in <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a>, where many city firefighters began as volunteers and continue to serve in their hometowns. The city's fire unions haven't taken action against any members who volunteer, but tensions have risen lately. "We ask you not to be a volunteer firefighter in your community," Capt. Peter L. Gorman, president of the fire officers local, told members in July. "... At the very least, please leave your volunteer chiefs' cars at home." Elsewhere, association members actively highlight what they see as the slip-ups and weaker performance of volunteers with whom they serve in combination departments. And the union spent $1 million to pass a response-time standard in 2001 aimed in part at driving communities to replace their volunteers with paid firefighters. The National Fire Protection Association standard, known as 1710, calls on paid and combination fire departments to have a fully staffed engine at a fire scene within six minutes. It was supported by years of studies but opposed by cities because of the hiring it would demand. In 1992, hundreds of <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> volunteers joined their peers in voting down a standard that included volunteer departments, arguing it was unrealistic for them. In 2001, though, the union paid to enroll 2,600 of its members in the association and bused them to the meeting to outvote the opposition. "We first tried to raise the bar on adequate staffing and we got our -- -- kicked by a bunch of volunteers," Schaitberger told his cheering firefighters just before the vote. "... I believe we're ready to do the -- -- kicking today." Chronic friction This rancorous history has led to chronic friction that is hard to disguise, even in smoothly functioning combination departments, such as <a href="/topics/Montgomery">Montgomery</a> County, Md. When two <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> volunteer chiefs stopped by the <a href="/topics/Rockville">Rockville</a>, Md., fire station one day not long ago to learn more about <a href="/topics/Montgomery">Montgomery</a>'s methods, Alan Hinde warned them: "You're going to get clobbered." Hinde, then <a href="/topics/Rockville">Rockville</a>'s volunteer chief, had just filed a complaint with the county citing a "hostile work environment" created by the union, whose local was detailing volunteer lapses on its Web site. "If we're going to have any kind of collaborative working arrangement, that doesn't lead to it," said Hinde, now chief of the county's volunteer division. Eventually, the county forced the union to stop. There have been echoes of similar disputes in Long Beach's fire department, one of only two combination agencies here. In 2001, the firefighters' union complained in the local weekly newspaper about what it called "a deceptive fundraising letter" from the volunteers that claimed credit for answering calls that the union said paid firefighters had handled. The union also asked other unions representing Long Beach government workers and <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City firefighters to discourage their members from volunteering. That went nowhere. Jay Gusler, a former union president, was fired on unrelated misconduct charges but won reinstatement and has sued, claiming the city retaliated for his union activities. Volunteers lose standing Even dedicated volunteers find the friction demoralizing. "The really shocking thing, to be perfectly blunt, is the way everybody treats you," said Bruce Newell, an architect and 25-year volunteer in Orange County, <a href="/topics/California">Calif</a>.'s Modjeska Canyon. "They think we're incompetent." As Orange County's fruit groves and ranches have morphed into pharmaceutical plants and subdivisions, its volunteer departments have been folded into a single combination fire authority. And the "reserves," as volunteers are known, rapidly lost standing amid union complaints that they were unreliable. At first equal to the union crews, volunteers soon were issued different-colored helmet insignia. Their officers lost titles and rank after the union argued they didn't have the same training or standards. "I don't care -- I'll wear a duck suit if they want. I'm here to do a job," said Craig Sample, a volunteer who ran the county's busy Midway City firehouse in 2001. But by that point, volunteers were failing to respond to 47 percent of their alarms, the county said, forcing it to provide a paid backup crew on every call. Up to one-third of the volunteers left every year, forcing constant retraining. "If we did a cost-benefit analysis, we'd be bankrupt," paid Battalion Chief Scott Brown said. In 2003, after lobbying from the union and a "customer-centered strategic plan," Orange County decided most volunteers would no longer ride fire engines. They are now limited to a backup role in emergency medical service. The volunteers still get to fight fires in a few influential communities and in remote areas like Modjeska Canyon, where 100 or so annual calls for help don't justify a paid crew. "I don't really understand the union's position," Newell said. "If they didn't have all this force doing the work for the love of it, they wouldn't have all the money to pay their people like they do ... "I think they had a marvelous resource that they got rid of."

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A fractious history

Long Beach and Garden City are the only two fire departments on Long Island that have paid crews standing by in the firehouse to augment their volunteers. They are among the fastest, but they are not the most expensive. Long Beach arrived at fire calls in an average of 3 minutes, 41 seconds, about twice as fast as the <a href="/topics/Long_Island">Long Island</a> average, according to an analysis representing more than 90 percent of the alarms answered last year. It got ambulances to medical calls faster than anyone else, arriving in 3 minutes, 47 seconds. Garden City, which only responds to fire calls, comes in not far behind, arriving in 3 minutes, 43 seconds. New Hyde Park volunteers get an engine to fire calls an average of five seconds faster than Long Beach. The district's ambulance crews, augmented by paid technicians, aren't nearly as fast as Long Beach ambulances, though. They take an average of 5 minutes, 36 seconds. Both Long Beach and Garden City have bigger budgets than most Long Island departments, but despite fears about the cost of paying firefighters, neither is the most expensive department here by any measure. While Garden City is costly, it is not out of line with other departments. Its $5.4 million in annual costs, including pensions and other employee benefits, make it Long Island's third most expensive, after Hicksville and Coram. Twenty other volunteer departments, however, cost more per resident protected, and seven cost more per call answered. Thomas Foley, who was Garden City's volunteer chief until May, is proud of the service his department provides, though he says the expense makes him wary of saying it offers the most "bang for your buck." "In Garden City, people don't care if you are volunteer or paid -- all they care about is if they dial 911, someone comes," Foley said. "And try to put a price on that." Long Beach is a comparative bargain. Eighteen volunteer agencies spend more overall each year than its $3.6 million department, the busiest on Long Island. It also costs less than the average department per call and per resident. "We like to say we deliver the best fire service for the cheapest dollars," said City Manager Charles Theophan. " ... We have nowhere to go for money except the taxpayers, and we don't want to do that." Both combination departments, which hired their first firefighters in the 1920s, are headed by volunteer chiefs who have authority over the paid crews at emergencies, which Foley calls crucial for volunteer morale. In both departments, the paid crews drive separate rigs, occupy separate working quarters and aren't allowed to use the volunteers' bar or other recreational facilities. And in both Garden City and Long Beach, the unionized firefighters are counted on to handle the drudgery. "You don't burn up your guys on junk calls and service calls" such as automatic alarms, which are usually false, Foley said. Off-duty relations wax and wane depending upon the personalities, paid and volunteer firefighters said, but cooperation at emergencies is smooth. "We're all here to do the same thing: provide the best fire protection," said Joseph Cieslewicz, a former union president in Garden City.

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More bang for the buck

Holbrook Assistant Chief Rick Gimbl was on his way home from the firehouse a few minutes before 1 a.m. on Feb. 5 when he got a page about a fire at a trailer park on Lincoln Avenue. He headed straight over. Heavy snows had nearly blocked the narrow lanes, and Gimbl, who retired three years ago as a <a href="/topics/New_York">New York</a> City firefighter, was looking for a place to park when residents rushed out shouting someone was trapped. He ditched his chief's car in a snowbank, suited up and broke in the door. A wall of flame blocked the way, and temperatures inside were already somewhere between 300 and 500 degrees. Trailer fires burn fast, hot and deadly: The ceilings are so low, the rooms are so small and the synthetic materials used to build them go up so swiftly, they are often beyond saving before fire crews arrive. Gimbl, 53, reverted to the procedures drummed into him from his first days as an 18-year-old Holbrook volunteer. He got down low, below the worst smoke and heat. He conducted a systematic search with his hand on the wall to keep his bearings. The living room was empty. He turned back toward the flames, spraying pressurized water from an extinguisher to make a gateway, and crawled through it to the other half of the trailer. He soon came upon the looming bulk of 34-year-old James McGuire unconscious in the hallway. He felt for and found a pulse, then radioed fellow volunteers that he had a victim. Still crawling, he muscled the 280-pound man toward the door, keeping one hand on the wall. He handed him over the threshold to the arriving engine crew. McGuire was rushed to intensive care with burns over 70 percent of his body, including his lungs and trachea. It was touch and go for a while, with three weeks at the hospital and skin grafts on a leg. He has since moved into an apartment and gone back to work. "He still does have a problem on and off with his lungs," said his mother, Alyce McGuire of Farmingville. "... He was very lucky. They said another five minutes and he would've been dead." Gimbl, too, went to the hospital with chest pains. Inside of five minutes, he had gone from calmly driving to hauling an inert body through piercing heat while breathing through a mask and carrying tanks of water and oxygen. Heart attacks, not burns or falls, are the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths among U.S. firefighters. He got a Hallmark card from McGuire's mother after the fire, thanking him for saving her son's life. "In my eyes, you are a hero," she wrote. His wife, on the other hand, "thinks I'm nuts," Gimbl said. "She says I'm too old. ... I guess I'm not ready to stop ... I just feel my community needs it. I get a satisfaction from helping people."

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Spotlight on a hero: Rick Gimbl

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