Section II: Chapters Five-Ten
Chapters Five - Ten
P. 103 - Flood describes the 23d Street fire, a singularly painful event, as having “served its purpose”, enabling O’Hagan to “consolidate his power”. To the extent he may be ascribing that interpretation to O’Hagan, it’s unfounded. O’Hagan saw the fire as the most significant failure of his 14-year tenure.
P. 104 - Flood asserts that three months after the 23d Street fire O’Hagan resumed fighting “the slow-slog bureaucratic trench war”, a statement at odds with his recitation of O’Hagan’s innovations on P. 65 - 69.
P. 116 -119 - Flood describes a series of tragic fires that involved loss of civilian lives. However, the citations in the book date these fires to 1968, a time when units were being added to the Department. From 1968 - 1970 the Fire Department’s uniform force grew each year, peaking at more than 14,300.
P. 119 -120 - Flood claims that O’Hagan was not an expert in “‘ghetto firefighting’ - fighting fires in the crowded row houses and aging tenements of poor ...neighborhoods. Ghetto fires cause a disproportionate number of civilian and firefighter deaths, but they held none of the intellectual challenges O’Hagan sought. The physics of fire and smoke-flow in tenement buildings was well understood (particularly after O’Hagan and a group of scientists staged a series of experimental fires in an abandoned building in Bushwick) as were the weaknesses and strengths of the building construction.” He writes that O’Hagan was “drawn to high-rise houses and elite rescue squads - they fought some of the biggest, toughest fires, but went on fewer runs, which left him more time to study and get ahead.” Then Flood adds, “Ghetto firehouses had a different feel to them: the danger and camaraderie were a little closer; the men rowdier, less concerned with rising through the ranks than with fighting as many risky blazes as they could.”
In truth, as The Daily News ,3.21.65 reported, O’Hagan “sought and got assignments in many companies.” O’Hagan said, “Book knowledge is not enough. If you want to get ahead in the department, you have to have practical, diversified experience. It is best to move around the city. Each section has its own fire-fighting problems. The more experience, the better. I believed in practical experience I always tried to get active assignments. I would get bored if not active.”
O’Hagan was assigned for 10 years to Brooklyn companies, including the relatively slow E 318 in Coney Island and the busy L 110 in downtown Brooklyn. As a lieutenant he served with L 168 in Bensonhurst and L 102 in Bedford-Stuyvesant. As captain, E 279 in Red Hook and Rescue 1 in Lower Manhattan. As battalion chief in Manhattan”s 9th Battalion and as deputy chief in midtown Manhattan at the 3d Division. Multi-family row houses, excessive occupancy, unexpected conditions and deteriorating construction were common to these assignments. During those years, 1947 - 1964, O’Hagan received five citations for bravery.
O’Hagan’s personal journal of fire responses from 1965 through 1974 lists 482 responses - 169 Brooklyn, 155 Manhattan, 80 Bronx, 61 Queens,17 Staten Island. See O’Hagan v. Board of Trustees, Supreme Court, New York County Index No.12164/78. In addition, the Fire Bell Club News Notes, from 1965 - 1977, are replete with accounts of fires O’Hagan commanded.
This section is also inconsistent with an earlier section of the book where Flood
notes that O’Hagan developed standard operating procedures for fighting “old-law tenements”and conducted tests to better understand fire science. P. 65 -70. These
initiatives are the hallmark of an expert, notwithstanding Flood’s later assertion. As further evidence of O’Hagan’s expertise and familiarity with Bronx firefighting, several of the RAND studies with which O’Hagan was involved were simulations based upon data drawn from the Bronx - companies, response profile, location of fires and units, etc.. See, A Simulation Model of the New York City Fire Department: Its Use in Deployment Analysis, 1975; A New Era in the F.D.N.Y. .... tactical control force” John T. O’Hagan, W.N.Y.F. 1st Issue, 1970, P. 4.
Finally, Flood concludes the section with a non sequitur describing the psychological and sociological “feel” of ghetto firehouses. Toward what end?
P. 120 - Flood states, “If John O’Hagan and the new generation of get-ahead-test-takers he came up with were at one end of the spectrum of “professionalism” (in the by-the-book, buttoned-down sense), most ghetto firefighters seem to be at the other. O’Hagan was a military man and he like a military operation - uniforms pressed, shoes shined, the rig fresh-washed and gleaming ... Most busy houses in the Bronx had so little time between fires that the rigs went unwashed ...Shoes were shined ... but they were left inside lockers...O’Hagan didn’t bear any ill will toward ghetto fire companies, but he didn’t hold them in particularly high esteem either, certainly not the regard he had for specially trained rescue crews or companies in high-rise districts whose officers could match wits with architect and engineers. Some of O’Hagan deputies had more experience in the ghetto, but most of his top aides were from the same mold as he, and the unspoken assumption they held was that any jamoke could put out tenement fires and bust balls in some raucous firehouse in the South Bronx, the real pros were in Manhattan.” Flood then quotes a Bronx captain to that effect.
To start, this section is representative of many gratuitous throw-aways in the book that only contribute to a general pejorative tone - pejorative toward all firefighters as well as to O’Hagan. P. 24, 37, 38, 120. With regard to the firefighters, Flood paints a negative stereotypic picture of firefighters in the Bronx, using quotes from one of their own - Captain Tom Henderson. To impute that view to O’Hagan is simply unfounded. To O’Hagan , all firefighters were courageous professionals. The firefighters assigned to high fire response neighborhoods were the guys he’d want at any fire because they were fearless, savvy and fire science knowledgeable. Moreover, the analyses and tests conducted in Brooklyn to improve tenement firefighting attest to O’Hagan’s belief that such fires required skill, savvy and science to successfully fight - and the men fighting them should have the benefit of the best thinking and training on the pertinent subjects.
Flood’s unfavorable comparison of the relative levels of expertise possessed by Bronx versus Manhattan firefighters also flies in the face of the criticism he levels at O’Hagan on P. 119 where he asserts that O’Hagan lacked important ghetto fire experience by virtue of not having been assigned to the Bronx before becoming Chief. If the experience was so valuable, why demean it? O’Hagan recognized the value and included men with that experience on his staff, as Flood acknowledges.
Flood uses a similarly pejorative tone to paint a picture of O’Hagan, as when, for example, he refers to him as, “hard Irish”, Little Lord Fauntleroy or speculates about a rumor that O’Hagan scored well on the promotional tests because he had advance access to exams. P. 38, 60. To the extent people Flood interviewed felt that way, these are fair comments.
With regard to the text, what does Flood mean by “‘professionalism’(in the by- the-book, buttoned down sense)”? For O’Hagan it meant extinguishing fires in the safest, quickest way that minimized the collateral damage to property. The 11th Airborne’s wartime experiences were far from ‘spit and polish duty’; however, a pressed uniform goes hand-in-hand with that professionalism. It reflects self-esteem and pride in one’s work - attributes important for firefighters working under the most difficult conditions. A leader honors his men by recognizing both aspects of professionalism. It’s callow for Flood to suggest otherwise.
For years on Saturdays mornings O’Hagan visited units in high fire activity areas to show support - early Mass, breakfast, trip to the firehouse, listen and talk with the men, home by noon.
P. 121 - Flood claims O’Hagan had a “blind spot” about conditions companies located in poverty- stricken neighborhoods faced.
The addresses of the fires listed in his journal and the Fire Bell Club News Notes attest to O’Hagan’s familiarity with poor neighborhoods. This familiarity extended to social inequalities. When questioned by the judge during a hearing in a discrimination case whether the 20 questions regarding civics were necessary to be a good firefighter, O’Hagan replied, “No.” A settlement was shortly reached setting a formula for hiring people of color. The Daily News, 10.4.73.
O’Hagan secured federal HUD Model Cities funding to introduce a program designed to prevent housing from becoming vacant after a fire. He developed a collaborative inter-agency program to demolish vacant buildings and also obtained LEAA money to develop a program designed to track suspicious real estate transactions as a predictor of arson.
As described above at P. 9, O’Hagan devoted resources to better understand fire science in order to better protect the residents of low-income neighborhoods. Along that line, O’Hagan also established the fatal fire study, which matched a fire in which a fatality occurred with a similar fire in which no fatality occurred. The objective was to determine factors that were significant when there was a loss of life and counter those factors.
P. 121 - Flood concludes this chapter stating, “And so a blind spot, a rare hole in the chief’s own experience and in the perspectives of the men he surrounded himself with, allowed O’Hagan to downplay the alarming trend in ghetto fires, just as a similar blind spot was allowing Mayor Lindsay and RAND to overlook the broader economic and social collapse underlying those fires.”
This is another instance of Flood closing a chapter with a flourish of speculation and hyperbole untethered to fact. Having fictionalized O’Hagan’s expertise and ascribed to him and his staff perspectives that fit his narrative, Flood supposes O’Hagan “downplay[ed] the alarming trend in ghetto fires”. The assertions are based upon nothing. As the Annual Reports and the fire buff newsletter attest, the department daily monitored responses to identify weekly and monthly trends. To say that Mayor Lindsay had a similar blind spot is contrary to even the most critical historical accounts of his mayoralty, many of which Flood cites.
P. 159 - 160 - In his account of the socio-economic changes in the Bronx, Flood notes that merchants began moving from the county in 1963 as murders increased. This fact argues against his thesis. And, as noted above, middle class flight from the Bronx started in the 1950s. On P. 160 Flood describes socially deteriorating conditions in the Bronx in 1968, a time when the Fire Department was adding resources to address increasing demand for fire protection.
P.176 -185 - The assertions Flood makes in this section constitute serious misrepresentations that he then uses to support the book’s fundamental thesis as described above. Flood argues that RAND’s assessment of a Bronx company with a second section (E 82 and its second section E 85) was flawed, and because the assessment aligned with O’Hagan’s supposed bias against the second sections - a bias based on the unions’ support of the second sections - the flawed assessment was adopted. He also asserts that by withdrawing all the second sections, the work of the remaining companies increased to what Flood believes were unacceptable levels.
Flood’s argument misrepresents both O’Hagan’s position and the RAND analysis. The implementation of the second sections took place with O’Hagan’s approval. In assessing the operation of the second sections, RAND observed that the rules alarm dispatchers were required to use mandated that the new E 85 was often sent to complete the standard complement of engines directed to an alarm. That complement was comprised of the engine company directed to respond as the primary and the now- available E 85. Had E 85 not existed, the incomplete E 82 would have constituted the entire fire response, unless additional companies were requested. E 85's responses as the “filler” constituted real work, but skewed the statistics because if E 85 hadn’t responded there still would have been a unit dispatched to the alarm. The remedy was to develop the adaptive response initiative to complement the second sections. Adaptive response meant that initially a smaller number of units would be sent to an alarm with more to follow if the alarm required it - i.e., the call was not a false alarm or rubbish fire. See “Improving the Deployment of New York City Fire Companies” , P. 8 et seq. This proved to be a successful adjustment in the dispatching system.
Ultimately, of the 12 second sections that were formed (Bronx 6, Brooklyn 4, Manhattan 2), 10 were disbanded or relocated in 1972 and 1974, when fiscal constraints dictated that one unit be closed or relocated in places where multiple units provided coverage. See the Appendix.
One exception was E 70-2 which was closed in 1971, except for weekends in the summer. The second exception was E 85. In July 1971, E 85 was moved from Intervale Avenue, where it backed E 82, to Boston Road to join with TCU 712. In that new location - 4 blocks from Intervale Ave. - E 85 remained one of the top 25 busiest units due to the increased alarm activity in that area. So great was the increase in alarm activity that one year later, L 59 was created from Manhattan Squad 6 to assist at the Boston Road firehouse. In his account of E 85's relocation, Flood does not mention this aspect of the move. He only asserts that O’Hagan “closed” E 85 in vindictive retaliation against the then union president, Michael Maye, who was a member of E 82, the company E 85 had been paired with on Intervale Avenue. P. 193. Further discussion of the second sections can be found at PP. 9-11, 27, 33.
P. 176 - Flood quotes the Walker report to say, “To relieve its workload, the department created a new company (E85) in July 1967, and put it in the same firehouse as Eng 82. It was expected that Eng. 82's workload would be cut in half. But in 1968, Eng 85's first full
year of operation, Eng 82 was still the busiest company in the city and Eng. 85 was the second busiest. Instead of helping the busy units, there were now two busy units,” at an additional cost of $600,000. The problem with the second sections, RAND decided, was false alarms” and concludes that RAND determined that the “second sections were a waste of resources.” In the next paragraph Flood imputes to RAND the view that “85 was just an extra engine going on useless false-alarm runs.”
That is not what the report says. Walker never mentions false alarms nor does the report conclude that the second sections should be eliminated. In the context of explaining how E 82 and E 85 worked during 1968, the first year the second section operated, he notes the sharp increase in alarms across the city. Walker then factors out that workload increase in explaining why merely adding units to the area didn’t solve the problem. The section explains the value of quantitative study. See Performing Policy Analysis for Municipal Agencies: Lessons from the New York City-RAND Institute’s Fire Project (1975), P. 6-12.
The phenomenon observed with E 82 and E 85 - i.e., an increased annual workload for the two units rather than a reduction - occurred with other second sections too. In 1969, E 46-1 and E 46-2, E 91-1 and 91-2, L 103-1 and 103-2 and L 26-1 and 26-2 all experienced unexpected workload increases that put them in the top 25 companies.
Another RAND report, Improving the Deployment of New York City Fire Companies (1974), which Walker co-authored, explained the increase. “Adding Engine 85 did not relieve the workload of Engine 82 because of the unexpected interplay of two seemingly logical dispatching rules which together comprised the traditional dispatching policy: (1) always dispatch the units closest to the alarm, and (2) send three engine companies and two ladder companies - if they are available, but send at least one engine and one ladder. Our analysis showed the Department that, since in busy periods, many companies are not available, as little as one engine company and one ladder company are often sent. Then, our simulation model showed that the new company was drawn into the role of “filling out” the response to alarms, primarily providing an unneeded second or third engine at trash fires and false alarms. As a result of the dispatch policy, instead of the same number of responses being spread over more companies, the total number of responses in the area was increased.” P. 8. Two diagrams that follow this explanation illustrate the problem. The report goes on to explain the innovations RAND and the Fire Department explored to better allocate units in responding to alarms. These are discussed in more detail below. Greenberger and Dennis Smith, both of whom Flood cites, describe the success of the programs the Department negotiated with the union in 1969 in reducing the department’s excessive workload. Greenberger, above, P. 275-278, Report from Engine Company 82 (New York: McCall Books, 1972) , Dennis Smith P. 12.
The table below, using alarm response statistics from the 1969 Annual Report place this explanation in a context:
In the face of these numbers it’s hard to credit Flood’s point that false alarms should have been considered as important as workers (any type of actual fire) in determining the deployment of companies and response complements. Flood’s view that every alarm should receive a full response from the outset since every alarm has the potential to be a raging fire is consistent with his failure to distinguish among the various types of fires on the theory that all are equal in their potential capacity to devastate. However, in a world where scarce resources must meet varying levels of need, Flood’s analysis doesn’t work. As the Fire Department discovered, when every alarm received the same complement of three engines and two ladders, often there were no companies available to respond when alarms were turned in - because all units were out already answering alarms. Flood never explains why a full complement of 3 engines and 2 ladders should be sent to a false alarm or rubbish fire when there was a way to send fewer companies and conserve manpower resources for the nearly 11,000 structural fires the Bronx experienced in 1969.
Walker’s report, written in 1975, also is interesting in that it describes the RAND and Fire Department collaborations in applying RAND’s analyses to the on-the-street, non- theoretical, challenges the Fire Department faced. See Performing Policy Analysis for Municipal Agencies, P. 9 - 14.
P. 177 - Flood states that the tactical control units (“TCU”) were housed in quonset huts and he describes the sense of dislocation firefighters suffered from not having a “brick and mortar firehouse” around which to develop espirit. What he doesn’t say until later in the book is the TCU firefighters volunteered for that assignment, and each TCU was affiliated with a particular company at a particular firehouse address. For example, TCU 512 was housed with E 45 at 925 E. Tremont Avenue from the time it was organized in 1969 until it was disbanded in November 1971. He also doesn’t note, as O’Hagan described in the 1970 W.N.Y.F. article cited at P. 20, that the program was successful with the participants and the companies the TCUs assisted.
P. 178 -179 - Flood returns to the erroneous assertion he made on P. 177 that RAND blamed false alarms for the additional work E 85 and E 82 performed in1968. Having set up that strawman, Flood now argues that in focusing on the number of false alarms, RAND missed the more important statistic - the number of workers (any type of actual fires) the 2 units responded to that year.
Since RAND never articulated the argument Flood ascribed to them, these pages, a cornerstone of Flood’s thesis, constitute a serious misrepresentation.
In truth, the RAND reports consistently include statistics that reflect the alarms to which companies responded. See, for example, Improving the Deployment of New York City Fire Companies, (1974), PP. 2 - 6, 12; Measuring Travel, PP. 3 - 25.
Flood’s effort to measure a unit’s workload by looking at the number of workers to which the unit responded in a year and comparing that number to the worker responses of other units is flawed in several respects.
At the outset, all fires are not equal as the table on P. 25 - 26 demonstrates. The amount of resources, time, equipment, manpower and labor expended vary according to the circumstances of each type and episode. The information that differentiates among workers is readily available in the Annual Reports Flood cites in his bibliography, yet he ignores the statistics set forth in those reports that breakdown workers into types and structural fires into levels of severity, areas of building involvement, and areas of the building where the fire started. See for example, 1972 Annual Report, PP. 4, 6 - 10, 12, 14, 27, 29.
Flood’s cursory recitation of the increased number of workers E 46, E 82, E 88, L 27 and E 233 handled following the move of their respective second sections doesn’t begin to tell the story. To say that E 46's workers “jumped 40 percent that year and 90 percent in the next five years” tells the reader nothing germane to the work of E 46, yet alone the book’s thesis the workload is invoked to support. P. 179.
To say that when E 88-2 “was closed .... 88-1 nearly doubled its number of working fires, jumping from the thirty-ninth busiest engine in the city to the sixteenth” is not only unilluminating, it’s false. E 88-2 didn’t close; it was re-deployed as E-72. P. 217. So too, when L 27-2 was disbanded to form L 58 - at the same address, 453 E. 176th Street, the residents of that neighborhood lost no service. Each of Flood’s statements regarding the units is vulnerable to the same criticisms. P. 176, 224.
In addition to not differentiating among the various types of workers - structural fires, rubbish fires, car fires, etc., Flood fails to engage in other analysis. He does not explain the impact of the moves on the unit relocated or on the area that unit was assigned to serve. He does not explain the nature of the workers to which each unit responded. Nor does he explore the effect the strategies implemented to offset the move had on the unit.
Also, Flood does not address the Fire Department’s statistical practice of crediting a response or worker to the home company, with no recognition that a work interchange unit or other back up might have assisted in handling the alarm and shared in the work. See for example, Fire Bell Club News Notes, January, 1971, P. 6., for clarification of annual statistics. At a minimum, this type of information is necessary to properly critique the management decisions O’Hagan made.
P. 178 - Flood writes, “Not a ghetto firefighter by inclination or experience, the chief had stayed relatively aloof from the issue, focusing on high-rise fire codes and the kind of quantitative reforms he and Isenberg had been working on. O’Hagan knew he needed to hand off responsibility for the issue to someone and RAND’s second-section studies and contract proposals proved a successful audition.”
This is an example of Flood’s strategy of spinning a paragraph to move from one unproven point to the next in the effort to build his thesis. Having created a fictionalized account of O’Hagan’s experience and expertise, Flood now posits that O’Hagan distanced himself from what he calls “the issue.” It’s impossible to discern what this passage means. What is “the issue?” If it’s ghetto firefighting, the discussion at PP. 16-20 of O’Hagan’s experience and commitment refutes the first sentence. The second sentence is not supported by any citation. To whom did O’Hagan hand off responsibility? Responsibility for what? And what was the “successful audition?” The Chief, as the senior operational officer, is responsible for every aspect of operations, even those he delegates to others.
Flood’s statement also is at odds with his later assertions that O’Hagan manipulated RAND results. See discussion at PP. 40, 53 relative to P. 211, 244. The two contentions are disjunctive.
P. 179 - In further explaining workers, Flood asserts that a unit could technically report a false alarm as a worker. See P. 297n. He also maintains that a truer measure of a unit’s work is the “work time” - the time a unit spends fighting fires. But, he then points out the weaknesses in the “work time” statistic - limited availability and the often faulty memory of the officer reporting the number. To spend time musing about workload measures, without actually explaining the details of workload information available in the Annual Reports at the very least is inexplicable.
P. 179 - Flood’s continuing discussion of RAND’s analysis of the second sections also continues the misrepresentations cited above. Flood asserts that RAND did not recognize the contributions the second sections made in that the researchers did not note that (1) E 85 worked actual fires when it responded as the “filler”, (2) the work of other units fell when second sections were added, and (3) the comparative workload rankings of the busiest companies were affected by the removal of the second sections.
This is another example of Flood backing into his thesis by manipulating information
His assertion simply is not true. The analysis above at PP. 23 - 26 undercuts points (2) and (3). Flood’s contention regarding (1) does not take into account the limitations of using workers as a workload measure also discussed at above. Absent Fire Department archival material about the second sections, Flood doesn’t know what types of work the companies he compares actually engaged in. By lumping all fire responses into one category, equating a structural residential fire requiring multiple alarms with a trash can fire Flood is disingenuous.
Neither RAND nor O’Hagan panned the second sections. Each recognized the assistance the second sections provided when integrated with other deployment initiatives designed to maximize manpower at peak fire alarm periods - i.e., the expanded adaptive response program, implementation of the TCUs - units that operated during high peak hours - and other workload interchange practices that relieved pressure on units located in high alarm neighborhoods. Flood’s reference to RAND’s expansion of the second section studies implies that he knows his argument on this point is specious. P. 194. See, Greenberger, above.
As stated above the second sections remained operational until the 1972 and 1974 fiscal crises when the units were closed or relocated because other units existed at the same firehouse that covered the same neighborhood. Elsewhere in the city, where there was less fire activity, companies saw their manning reduced so that reductions in the higher activity part of the city would be minimized. A more detailed explanation of the second sections’ closing is at below.
In describing the success of the second section units Flood criticizes O’Hagan for closing one in order to open another. That criticism sits in a vacuum because Flood does not explore the Fire Department’s specific rationale for individual company closings or relocations.
Such reasoning is available in the public record. For example, the rationale for each of the 1974 unit changes and the measures put in place to offset the losses are listed in documents included from Towns, v. Beame, 74 Civ. 5411 (S.D.N.Y.), O’Hagan Affidavit, Exhibits, Homer Bishop Testimony. The court papers describe how units were selected according to the proximate availability of other units. Then response time for those units was calculated and factored into the decision. When units were closed other mechanisms were put in place to minimize the loss. In poor neighborhoods, 32 companies had 6-man manning rather than 5-man manning as in the rest of the City. These units included L 26-1 in Harlem, the 14 ladder companies in the South Bronx, and 14 ladder companies in central Brooklyn. In addition, 5 squad companies - i.e., an engine company trained to work as an engine or ladder unit - were assigned to areas that lost units. During high alarm rate hours they worked as a first section of a busy engine company to relieve the workload. During low alarm rate hours they worked as an extra company to respond to serious fires. See Bishop Testimony, P. 100-101. Another relief mechanism was workload interchange, where one unit from a slow area spells a unit in a heavy volume area. O’Hagan Affidavit, Exhibits. The emergency reporting system, whereby a citizen tells the dispatcher what the alarm is so the proper complement of units can be sent also provided relief. See Bishop Testimony, P. 91.
It also bears noting that some low-income areas were not affected by the cuts. These included Jamaica, parts of Queens, Ladder 17 in the South Bronx, and parts of the Lower East Side.
Similar explanations for the 1972 cuts were offered in Maye v. Lindsay, 72 Civ. 4912 (S.D.N.Y. 1972), though most of that court file appears to be missing. Both cases are discussed at below P. 221.
P.180 -181 - Flood asserts that O’Hagan rejected the six-page proposal of a Deputy Chief Kirby who advocated assigning to the Bronx additional units and forming liaisons with other city agencies to address social issues. He also describes O’Hagan’s general decision process: “RAND was pushing O’Hagan’s favored root approach for tackling problems: compartmentalize an issue, analyze it with comprehensive statistics, and charge ahead with a bold new solution.”
Deputy Chief Kirby’s ideas and the memo were never rejected. The memo is dated March 17, 1970. One month earlier, L 27-2 had been opened in th Bronx; before the end of 1970 two more second sections would open in the Bronx - E 50-2 and L 17-2. Moreover, as Flood himself states on P. 180, prior to March 1970, the community outreach and coordinated interagency action Kirby described had been integrated into operations across multiple agencies. The Annual Reports describe the Fire Department’s significant community outreach efforts. Included are the Mayor’s Urban Task Force, Neighborhood Anti-Poverty programs and fire/youth community activities aimed at 14-17 year old men. In addition, NYC-RAND’s first report to the City described a study of city services from residents’ perspectives. The neighborhoods surveyed included Highbridge, Morrisiana, Harlem, East Harlem, the lower East Side, Bushwick, and Brownsville. In 1973, a cross-agency program was implemented to encourage minority applicants to the Fire Department. See Letter from Commissioner John T. O’Hagan to Mayor John V. Lindsay, 11.5.73.
As for O’Hagan’s decision process, Flood offers no authority for the explanation. Again, absent reference to contemporaneous Fire Department archival materials, Flood simply does not know what that process entailed. A reading of the RAND reports indicates that no deployment issues were “compartmentalized.”.
P. 182 - Flood writes, “It is impossible to determine the exact mix of motives behind O’Hagan’s decision to side with RAND over Kirby, but by all indications the chief’s belief that the FLAME second sections were a personal affront to him played a role in the decision ... RAND told him exactly what he wanted to hear (that second sections were useless: that spending money on poor, politically weak neighborhoods would do little good) blinded the chief to the very real success that second sections had in cutting the number of workers....” See also P. 195.
In the absence of any factual support for these assertions, Flood baldly creates the “facts” that are necessary for him to sustain his thesis. RAND and O’Hagan recognized the success of the second sections, adaptive response and TCUs, among other initiatives as explained in the RAND reports and Towns v. Beame, 74 Civ 5411 (S.D.N.Y. 1974). There was no “sides” to take as Kirby’s ideas had never been rejected, as discussed above.
The notion that the second sections were closed because they were a “personal affront” is baseless. O’Hagan formed the first second section, E 85, in 1967. The others were formed in 1968 through 1970. At stated above, with adjustments in deployment policies, the second sections remained operational until the 1972 and 1974 fiscal crises.
P. 185 - Flood writes, “For the chief, though the decision contained no such momentousness. In fact, for all the personal, political and philosophical issues that motivated his fateful choice [not to side with Chief Kirby], as far as O’Hagan was concerned, it was just one aspect of a larger political battle he was waging for the good of the city and the department. This other battle, and the time, energy, and political capital it required, was the reason why O’Hagan’s third option for handling ghetto fires - digging in and studying the problem himself, unleashing the keenest firefighting mind in the business on what was fast shaping up to be the most disastrous wave of fires any modern city had ever known - was never really an option at all. The chief had bigger fish to fry, and not in the slums of the Bronx, but in the high-rise canyons of Manhattan.”
In this passage, Flood resorts to several analytical sleights of hand to reach conclusions that are unsupported by any facts. He has recast the city-wide deployment of fire protection services as part of a deliberate decision - if not conspiracy - to consign the Bronx to destruction. Then, he ascribes motivation to the decision by constructing a false dichotomy - asserting O’Hagan chose to pursue enactment of a high-rise building code instead of protecting the Bronx. Such a dichotomy never existed, as the record of Fire Department initiatives demonstrates. Pursuit of one goal did not deter or obviate pursuit of the other. More importantly, Flood’s grave assertion that O’Hagan deliberately withdrew companies from the Bronx or any other poor neighborhood for the purpose of facilitating “slum clearance” is not supported by any fact contained in the book - or in any public or private record. Combined with the veiled assertions Flood makes in the section below that addresses Local Law 5, it is calumny at its starkest.
To base such an allegation on a supposed rejection of Chief Kirby’s memo, especially when Kirby’s ideas were never rejected, is ludicrous. Also ludicrous is Flood’s assertion that one person alone - O’Hagan - could solve the complex socio-economic problems associated with the fire devastation the city experienced at that time - fires that Flood recognizes at P. 121 were a manifestation of those socio- economic problems. Flood continues this theme on P. 192.