A New York firefighters union is upset about department staffing and the city's policy to temporarily close certain stations.
The concern from Vincent Ventresca, Buffalo's fire union president, comes on the heels of a blaze that killed an 84-year-old man Friday, WKBW-TV reports. At the time, Engine 21, which is only a mile from the scene, was shut down because of dynamic staffing, a city policy that closes stations on a rotating schedule when a certain number of firefighters are out.
While Ventresca does not say that the city's dynamic staffing was responsible for the fatality Friday, he did tell WKBW that if Engine 21 was in operation, it would have been able to bring water to the blaze swiftly.
"In this case, they went in and did an aggressive search without a handline, and those efforts were thwarted by the heat and the fire, and they were forced from the building," he added. "That's what it took them to stop searching, the heat and the fire."
Buffalo Fire Commissioner William Renaldo, however, disputes that dynamic staffing is a problem.
"We had over 50 firefighters respond to that fire, well within the national standards time limit," he told WKBW.
