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Eastchester FD: County mutual aid system is broken

Updated on Feb. 16 at 4:45 p.m.

The Eastchester Fire District says it should have been immediately called to assist in a fatal fire outside of its borders—less than a mile away from one of its stations—in nearby Scarsdale late last year.

The deadly fire killed the homeowner, Dr. John Salimbene, who ran his medical practice from a home office. Salimbene had also been the official physician for the village of Tuckahoe for more than 50 years.

The cause of the fire has not been determined to date, according to Scarsdale fire Chief James Seymour.

The fire, which occurred at around 3:20 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2016 at 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale, was severe enough to warrant the call for mutual aid to other fire departments in Westchester County. In addition to the Scarsdale Fire Department, several other departments were called by 60 Control, a county service which is responsible for dispatching mutual aid when it receives a call from a department in need of assistance. According to Westchester County Department of Emergency Services documents, fire departments are not supposed to directly request mutual aid from a neighboring department, and should instead go through 60 Control.

In response to a Freedom of Information Law, FOIL, request made by the Review this month, the emergency services department is compiling a list of other departments that were called to assist in that fire, according to Kieran O’Leary, an emergency services spokesman.

The fire at 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale warranted call for mutual aid from several neighboring departments. Photo/Daniel Murray
The fire at 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale warranted call for mutual aid from several neighboring departments.
Photo/Daniel Murray

The Eastchester Fire District, however, maintains that it was not one of the departments promptly called to assist. Nonetheless, Richard Dempsey, the captain on duty at the time of the fire, responded on his own volition, sending two of the department’s trucks to the scene, according to Eastchester fire officials.

Dennis Winter, chairman of the Eastchester Fire District Board of Fire Commissioners, said the Fire Department was alerted to the fire by Eastchester police who had received calls of smoke in the area.

But fire district officials said they shouldn’t have had to rely on self-dispatch to respond to the fire, as its northernmost station, at 31 Wilmont Road in Eastchester, is less than seven-tenths of a mile away from where the fire took place. Eastchester fire officials noted, and Seymour confirmed, that Scarsdale’s southernmost station, which was closest to the location of the fire, was closed on Dec. 4, as the station’s only engine was in the repair shop.

Winter said that while the mutual aid system has usually worked efficiently, the incident in December indicates that the system, which is run by the county Department of Emergency Services, might need to be updated. “We’d be negligent as a board not to raise a red flag and say, ‘Somebody fix it,’” he said.

But Winter added that the Eastchester Fire District has little recourse over the matter other than to alert the county of the perceived misstep.

“It’s not our issue that they didn’t call us,” Winter said. “But it [seems] to me that there needs to be a better system. This is county-driven; this is not us.”

According to the most recent Westchester County Fire Mutual Aid Plan, which was adopted on Dec. 19, 2012 and is posted on the county website, Westchester.gov, the county is divided into so-called battalions to organize mutual aid response. The Eastchester Fire District is part of mutual aid Battalion 18, which also encompasses Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Greenville, Pelham, and Pelham Manor. Scarsdale falls into Battalion 19, which sits to the northeast of Battalion 18, and includes White Plains, North White Plains, West Harrison, Purchase, and the Westchester County Airport.

Eastchester's North End firehouse on Wilmont Road is less than a mile away from 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale, the scene of a fire on Dec. 4 which killed the homeowner. The closest responding station in Scarsdale was three times as far. Map courtesy Google Maps
Eastchester’s North End firehouse on Wilmont Road is less than a mile away from 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale, the scene of a fire on Dec. 4 which killed the homeowner. The closest responding station in Scarsdale was three times as far.
Map courtesy Google Maps

O’Leary added that the county Department of Emergency Services could not disclose how often departments were dispatched across battalion lines, as it does not keep track of that information.

But departmental preferences takes precedence over battalion lines. Each department involved in the county’s opt-in mutual aid program is responsible for creating a “run card,” listing the neighboring departments which each fire department would prefer to call first in the event that mutual aid is required. According to O’Leary, the county does not override the requests unless a department from a run card is not available, in which case 60 Control asks the department which is requesting mutual aid for further guidance.

Seymour said that Eastchester is on the second tier of Scarsdale’s run card. Scarsdale gets a first wave of mutual aid when it sounds one alarm signaling a working fire, and a second wave of assistance—which includes Eastchester—when it raises a second alarm. He added that Scarsdale sounded two alarms for the Dec. 4 fire, but Eastchester was already on the scene. “Eastchester was there sooner than they would [have been] if we had transmitted a working fire second alarm,” he told the Review.

Transcripts of the fire show that Eastchester was not called to the fire until 14 minutes after the fire was initially reported. By comparison, the call for the first wave of mutual aid was issued six minutes after the fire was reported. Seymour said that because Depmsey self-dispatched, Eastchester was one of the first departments on the scene.

The Review has submitted FOIL requests to the county Department of Emergency Services and the Scarsdale Fire Department for additional transcripts of the Dec. 4 fire, and has also submitted a FOIL request for communications between the county department and the Eastchester Fire District regarding the fire.