P. 187 - 193 - Flood offers very little substantive discussion of the passage of Local Law 5 (“LL5"), the high rise building code. He doesn’t even state the year it was passed - 1973. Both here and in other parts of the book he alludes to O’Hagan having acted in an unprofessional, if not improper, way in advocating passage of the law. At some points he speculates that O’Hagan expected passage of the bill to make him eligible for elective office. At other points he argues that O’Hagan ignored the problems in the Bronx in order to focus on LL5. Still at other points he states that O’Hagan cut units in the department in order to curry the mayor’s favor. Flood seems to suggest that O’Hagan had an unspoken compact with the real estate industry that in exchange for passage of the law, fire protective resources would be withheld from the Bronx, thereby priming it for redevelopment. Flood even seems to suggest that City Hall and Bronx politicians were complicit.in the plan. Flood weaves it all together with phrases about O’Hagan’s “accumulation and exercise of political capital”. P. 40, 184, 185, 219, 306.

Absent any specific evidence of these veiled assertions, Flood’s account is a serious misrepresentation of fact. The only citation for this section is a note that Jack Rudin was an honorary pallbearer at O’Hagan’s funeral. P. 298n. Another note on the same page, suggests that New York’s Catholic leaders visited a hideaway called “Dropkick Murphy’s” in Boston. The result leaves the reader with an ambiguous but unsavory impression of LL5's adoption that does a disservice not just to O’Hagan but to the members of the real estate industry that supported LL5.

It is also noteworthy that LL5 was not uniformly supported by the real estate industry. Industry opponents challenged the law and only after five years of litigation- in 1978 - was it declared constitutional. See New York Times, 7.21.1978.
A last note - if the real estate industry had been angling to clear the Bronx and other poor neighborhoods in order to redevelop it, the 30 year delay in redevelopment argues against that theory.

P. 190 - Flood writes, “After losing the WTC battle, O’Hagan realized that for the first time in his career, power - more than test-taking prowess, managerial skill, or technological competence - was what he needed to achieve his goals. He began seeking out that political capital more formally, by becoming active in the Brooklyn and Queens Democratic organizations and in the Catholic Church, which still had considerable political sway in the city. But for all his juice with the Democratic Party, the most important politician in the city was still O’Hagan’s boss, John V. Lindsay. ....[Lindsay] actually thought of O’Hagan as an apolitical civil servant, an image O’Hagan had cultivated with this tough-minded approach to management and budget-making.”

Again, Flood has woven an entire passage of whole cloth. As Flood himself notes on P. 191, construction of the WTC was a Port Authority-controlled project. What Flood doesn’t note is that it was also a Rockefeller-controlled project. The City had no role in the construction: the towers were not subject to any City requirements. In addition, construction of the towers commenced in 1966; the North tower was completed in December 1970; the South tower followed one year later. At the time the building specifications were determined O’Hagan had no influence. Quite simply, there was no battle to fight.

As much as Flood might wish otherwise, O’Hagan was a civil service chief during this period, with no ‘juice’ in any political party. Flood’s statements here and in other parts of the book that O’Hagan was active in political clubs or the Catholic Church is based upon Tom Henderson’s statement that he “assumed O’Hagan knew influential club politicians.” The assertion is not supported by a single cite to a person, club or activity. That’s because O’Hagan was not politically active, cultivated no political patrons and had no political aspirations. From 1964 through October 1973 when he was Chief, O’Hagan’s boss was not Mayor Lindsay, as Flood contends, but the Fire Commissioner. O’Hagan was Commissioner under Lindsay for approximately 3 months, at the end of 1973 long after the WTC issues were resolved.

Another point on cultivating political influence - the Brooklyn and Queens political organizations were local organizations, not the places to build political clout that would matter in Manhattan or city-wide politics.

In addition, as much as Flood’s narrative needs to cast O’Hagan as a budgetcutter, for the first 6 years of his tenure as Chief the Fire Department increased its budget to add equipment, build new firehouses and hire additional firefighters. Management changes during that time were not made in the context of cost savings, they were to better deploy the department’s resources. Even during the fiscal crisis, the Fire Department’s budget continued to increase - in 1976 to $395 M.

Finally, though he refers to it frequently, Flood never describes what political capital is, beyond using the term in contexts that convey some negative aura.

P. 192- 193 - Flood writes, “ But riding high on his recent successes, O’Hagan continued to cultivate his image as a hard-nosed manager intent on cutting waste. He began threatening the unions and boasting to City Hall that he could run the department on 7,500 men instead of its current 14,000 uniformed personnel. He made steep cuts in “nonessential” operations like preventative fire inspections, upkeep, and repairs, and despite a slight uptick in arson for profit, fire marshals. Intent on running a smaller, more flexible department, the chief was proud of his ability to cut budgets....” Flood continues this section with a discussion of the 1971 hiring freeze.

Flood starts this section after discussing the pre-1970s WTC construction on P. 190 and the effort to pass LL5 on P. 192. The assumption might be that Flood is referring to O’Hagan’s success in getting LL5 passed in 1973. However, the next pages revert to the hiring freeze and other 1971 events, culminating in the closing and relocation of 13 companies in 1972. P. 193 - 195. It’s impossible to tell what time frame Flood refers to in this section.

Also, as explained above, the 1971 re-allocations of manpower were made to address the quickly increasing demand for fire protection services in the City - demand that the merely increasing the number of companies did not resolve P. 19-22. This section is yet another example of Flood confabulating events to suit his rhetoric and unsupportable thesis.

P. 194 - Flood ties Mayor Lindsay’s request for budget cuts in 1971 to the 1972 closing/relocating of companies. Without any details, he endorses six or so of the changes, criticizes the closing of four second sections and wonders why companies should be added in “sleepy” sections of Staten Island and Throgs Neck.

Settling the city’s budget in 1971 and 1972 was tumultuous. Newspaper accounts are a series of headlines about layoffs being imminent, followed by announcements that layoffs had been averted. In 1971, the Mayor imposed a hiring freeze throughout city government. He lifted the freeze in October 1972. During that interval the Fire Department’s uniform force declined by 429 men - a 3% reduction achieved by attrition which did not require drastic cuts. Other adjustments to offset the loss of manpower included changing the standard first alarm response, revoking the squad companies first alarm response assignments, authorizing the dispatchers to special call a squad to any alarm, and the extending the adaptive response program to more alarm boxes. See Fire Bell Club News Notes, September 1972, No. 9, Vol. 4., p.1-3.

By 1972, the budget constraints were more severe due to the recession, inflation and the city’s declining tax roll. A look at the list of companies opened and disbanded shows the following:

In November 1972, one - not four as Flood claims - second section was closed and three were relocated. In Brooklyn E 217-2 was closed. In the Bronx, E 88-2 was relocated to form E 72. Ladder 27-2. was reorganized as L 58, located at the same address. In addition, in Brooklyn, E 233-2 was relocated 1⁄2 mile as L 176 and, E 208 was relocated to Staten Island.

Also, in November 1972, Manhattan lost four companies: E 2, E 32, E 32, and Squad 6. The last had been disbanded to form L 59, which was assigned to the Bronx to assist E 85 at the Boston Rd address. As stated above, E 85 had moved to Boston Rd. in 1971, following its assignment as the pair for E 82. See also the discussion at P. 176-185.

Flood’s complaint that two companies should not have been relocated, respectively, to Staten Island and Throgs Neck, Bronx, is unfounded. Both areas experienced population and housing unit increases as well as upticks in brush fires that warranted the assignment of additional resources.

P. 195 - Closing the chapter, Flood writes, “How had models designed to make the least painful cuts and the most useful openings suggested closing some of the busiest fire companies in the city and opening companies in neighborhoods with few fires? How had systems analysis - designed specifically to favor scientific rationality over political and personal bias - given such dangerously irrational and politically expedient advice, allowing O’Hagan to close the second sections he saw as a personal affront and cut budgets in neighborhoods too weak to fight back?”

Here again, in concluding a chapter Flood spins conclusions and perspectives that are belied by the facts, some of which he lays out himself. A look at the map of fire company locations illustrates that the areas in the city with the busiest companies had the most coverage to re-allocate and even then continued to have the densest coverage. Conversely, areas with few alarms had few companies, coverage was spread thin and in some cases - namely, Staten Island and Throgs Neck - as circumstances dictated adjustments in unit locations were necessary.

P. 197-213 - Nine serious flaws are evident in this 16-page chapter:
(1) Flood asserts that RAND chose to rely solely on unit response time to determine fire unit locations as an expedient measure of real-time factors that can’t be quantified. He argues that response time studies suffered from faulty assumptions, bad data, cultural gaps between the researchers and firefighters and the political factors O’Hagan brought to bear in over-relying upon the RAND findings. P. 212.

Review of at least six RAND reports discloses significant discrepancies between the assertions and truth. A RAND report Flood doesn’t cite, “Square Root Laws for Fire Companies Travel Distances”(“Square Root”), lays out in detail, as caveats to the study, the arguments Flood himself uses to claim RAND was ignorant of the limitations in measuring response time (Square Root, p.1, 5.) In addition, multiple RAND reports address real-time issues pertinent to the challenges firefighters faced in dealing with ever-increasing numbers of fire alarms. These studies, which are publicly available, analyzed time-of-day alarm patterns, alarm dispatcher volume overloads, engine/ladder response complements, and identification of fire patterns, to name a few.

In addition, the RAND reports state in several different contexts, “ ... a simulation does not directly suggest any changes as being desirable; it simple describes what would happen if a proposed change were to be implemented. Thus its main use is for careful evaluation of a proposed deployment policy that has already been analyzed in some detail. ”Simulation Model of Fire Department Operations: Executive Summary (“Simulation: Executive Summary”)(1974), P. 4. 8-12. See also, A Simulation Model of Fire Department Operations: Design and Preliminary Results (“Simulation: Design and Preliminary Results”) (1970). Despite this information, Flood falsely maintains that RAND “put their concerns about response time’s shortcomings to the side.” P. 199.

(2) Flood asserts that RAND and the department used average time and distance to determine how to close and relocate units when averages do not accurately reflect actual responses.

The RAND reports state that simulation models provide approximations, which “will be a slightly incorrect representation of the travel time for an individual trip, but should yield response-time estimates which are accurate enough to be used to compare policies” - which in turn is the purpose of simulation models. See Simulation: Executive Summary, P. 9 (1974)

The department used average response distance as weighted by the availability of the first due unit and second due ladder company. It was not just the distance from the fire house to the alarm. See Towns v. Beame, 74 Civ. 5411 (S.D.N.Y. 1974), Homer Bishop Testimony, p. 92. See also, Simulation: Design and Preliminary Results, P. 33 for other adjustments the department made to the policy that differed from the simulation runs.

Parenthetically, Flood’s criticisms notwithstanding, the NYFD’s Vital Statistics report to this day lists average response time in detail as a measure of the department’s effectiveness.

(3)  To establish that O’Hagan and his liaison to RAND, Chief Homer Bishop, paid little attention to the flawed response time project, Flood states that both men signed off on the project. P. 201. In truth, as the RAND report notes, Chief Bishop oversaw the collection of data from the field. See “Measuring the Travel Characteristics of New York City’s Fire Companies” (“Measuring Travel”), P.vii.

Also, Flood’s claim that O’Hagan paid no attention to the project is at odds with an O’Hagan aide’s quote that “if the models came back saying one thing and [O’Hagan] didn’t like it, he would make you run it again and check, run it again and check.” P. 211. It’s also at odds with Flood’s contention later in the book that O’Hagan “fudged” the results for his own purposes. P. 244.

(4)  Flood’s use of the quote on P. 211 to establish, as he writes on P. 244, that O’Hagan “fudged” RAND simulation results to suit his own agenda, belies a fundamental misunderstanding of how computer simulations work as a tool and not a determinant in the decision making process.

Running simulation models over and over with permutations of each of the model’s variables is how simulation modeling is done. Within a model, “fire stations, fire-fighting companies and fires are each described by a set of attributes... by changing the coordinates and response areas of one of more fire stations, one could simulate a possible new configuration of firehouses. Afterwards, the analysts will compare the output of the two simulation runs. ”Simulation: Executive Summary, P. 8. O’Hagan’s article on the TCU’s similarly states, “The simulation model of the Bronx was used in making various computer runs. A comparison was made to determine which strategy provided the best fire protection in terms of minimum response times under both medium and high alarm arrival rates.”

Flood’s effort to impart a nefarious intent to the aide’s quote mis-states the point of the quote which, I would guess, was to demonstrate that O’Hagan was very much involved in understanding how every possible permutation of each variable in the simulation might affect the outcome. If, on the other hand, O’Hagan did manipulate RAND results, which ones, in what manner, and with what effect? An allegation so serious requires more support than this quote.

(5)  Flood cites as evidence of RAND’s flawed assumptions (a) the exclusion of engines from the study, (b) firefighters’ sabotaging of the data collection, (c) disproportionate Manhattan participation,(d) limited Bronx participation, and (e) the study parameter that only responses from the firehouse, not the field, be counted.

Each of these is explained in the RAND studies. Engines didn’t have odometers that measured to 1/10 of a mile. Faulty response times were eliminated. Companies with moderate work levels were enlisted because the burden of reporting times was perceived to be too great for overtaxed companies. The Bronx was the subject of its own simulation model, as reported in Simulation: Design and Preliminary Results. Responses from the field, as opposed to from the firehouse, were not readily measurable. Also, RAND had the data on every alarm response dating from 1962 and the day journals each unit maintained. See Measuring Travel, Square Root, Greenberger, p, 267.

(6)  Flood claims RAND concluded that “traffic played no role in response time, rigs able to cruise through mid-town Manhattan at rush hour at the same speed as through Queens at midnight.” P. 206.

In truth, the RAND report states,”...While velocities are lower during rush hours, they are not as much lower as we or the Department expected. The reduction in average velocity (of about 20 percent) is greatest during the 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. period.” Measuring Travel, p. 30.

(7) Flood argues that to get units quickly to the largest number of fires more units should be placed in neighborhoods where there is high fire activity - an outcome, he says, RAND should endorse. However, Flood states that reallocating units in that manner would require taking them from affluent areas. He then quotes a RAND researcher as saying residents in low activity affluent areas would oppose such a move. P. 205. The quote is cited in the notes as coming from an untitled RAND Report, No. 1566. P. 301n.

In truth, that report has a title - “An Analysis of the Deployment of Fire Fighting Resources in Yonkers, NY”. The report was commissioned to assist in relocating fire houses in Yonkers, not New York City, because a highway construction was about to bifurcate Yonkers. An urban fire crisis in poor neighborhoods was never mentioned in the report. The section Flood cites explains that fire protection is provided at tax-payer expense and therefore should be efficient, effective and equitable. The option the report recommended was to place more resources in the high volume section of the city then divide the remaining resources equally among the others sections. Nowhere in the report could I find the quote Flood attributes to the report.

Also, it should be noted that this passage is another example of Flood’s persistent use of strawman arguments. He posits that the only way to deploy more units in high fire areas is to take them from affluent areas. His thinking represents the traditional view of resource allocation that failed when the Fire Department added more than 10 companies in the late 1960s through 1970. It was that failure that prompted the City to seek RAND’s assistance and the Fire Department brass to explore alternatives to the traditional allocations of manpower and deployment. Contrary to Flood’s view, the Fire Department’s successful initiatives - such as adaptive response, TCUs, work interchange and combined units - demonstrated alternatives to maximize the resources available during peak fire activity periods in poor neighborhoods. Also, review of the units assigned to low-fire activity areas in the City, including affluent areas, demonstrates that companies were withdrawn and manning on each unit reduced. 

(8)  Flood asserts repeatedly in the book that affluent neighborhoods where prominent New Yorkers lived were able to prevent units from being closed in their backyard, yet he offers no example. See also, P. 244. Nor does Elmer Chapman, the aide he cites in support of that claim. In fact, Mr. Chapman believes he is mis-quoted in this passage. Tom Henderson states that E 89 on Bruckner Blvd. in the Bronx remained open under pressure from a local politician. However, Fire Department records show that E 89 closed on July 2, 1975 at the height of the fiscal crisis and re-opened 17 days later, one of the last to reopen, when federal and monies were allocated.

Another example contrary to Flood’s assertion sits in Mayor Lindsay’s Fire Department correspondence file. By letter dated November 21, 1972 Queens Assemblyman Posner wrote to the Mayor objecting to the proposed closing of E 267 on Rockaway Beach Blvd. The unit closed as scheduled 5 days later. On February 1, 1973, the Mayor wrote back to Assemblyman Posner and referenced another response to the Queens Borough President’s complaint about the closing of a fire house.

(9)  Repeatedly in the chapter, as throughout the book, Flood asserts that John O’Hagan made manpower allocation decisions with an eye toward personal political advancement or to be vindictive. Flood’s failure to include in the book any Fire Department material that discusses these decisions begs the question whether the omission is because the material demonstrates his assertions are wrong. Absent primary, contemporaneous information from the Fire Department explaining the decisions, Flood is fighting a another strawman.

Flood supports each assertion that O’Hagan was vindictive with speculation or a quote from someone who says he was vindictive, but without any example other than the post-strike transfer of firefighters from the union president’s unit and the assertion that E 85 was closed to harm Michael Maye, a past union president. The latter episode is addressed at pp. 23-24. Absent that archival material or direct statements from O’Hagan it’s not possible to say he was vindictive. As The Daily News pointed out in a November 27,1973 editorial following the firefighters’ strike, O’Hagan’s decision to transfer 150 firemen who formed the nucleus of the group that fomented the strike was a reasonable management response to restore stability to the department’s operations. When O’Hagan subsequently decided not to file departmental charges against the strikers he took editorial heat for the decision. The Daily News, 1.4.74.

Similarly, closing or moving a unit to which a union officer was attached is not presumptively vindictive. As noted above, Michael Maye’s unit was not moved or closed; the company with whom his unit was paired was relocated 4 blocks away. Richard Vizzini’s unit was disbanded following the illegal strike as part of the transfer of 150 firefighters note above.

In criticizing O’Hagan’s manpower allocation decisions, Flood offers one alternative that O’Hagan should have implemented - add more companies to neighborhoods experiencing high alarm activity. When O’Hagan closed or relocated units, which occurred in response to the fiscal crises in 1972, 1974 and 1975, the elimination of units was painful no matter how implemented. It was pain O’Hagan shared by reducing manning in the fire houses in his own neighborhood and reconfiguring his own staff to reduce costs.

P. 213 - Flood closes this chapter with a discourse on political influence. He writes, “ Sometimes that influence comes in the form of out-and-out fraud, as happened with firefighters who lied about response times, O’Hagan’s willingness to close companies not recommended by RAND when the political situation called for it, and in Vietnam, where military brass faked the “body count” of enemy soldiers to give McNamara and his Whiz Kids a rosier view of the supposed war of attrition than was accurate .... More often, that influence doesn’t come in the form of malfeasance but rather ignorance-inducing wishful thinking. Like football fans watching a penalty-filled football game, people have an extraordinary ability to see what they want to see. RAND and Lindsay wanted to believe O’Hagan was an apolitical civil servant. O’Hagan wanted to believe that RAND’s studies were accurate and that he really could cut budgets, close houses he held a grudge against, and not significantly hurt fire coverage. Lindsay wanted to believe that the kind of whiz-bang, scientific management of the bureaucracy he’d long hoped for was coming to fruition. And in all three cases, they weren’t just fans of these ideas, their jobs depended on them. And so, everyone involved was willing to look the other way as plans to close busy fire stations went into effect while the neighborhoods around them burned to the ground.”

This is another example of a Flood flight of fancy into others’ states of mind that enables him to connect the dots he already plotted in an effort to support his untenable thesis. Suffice it to say that if Lindsay, RAND and O’Hagan knew anything, it was that the issues at stake were larger than their jobs.

Parsing Flood’s statements, on the one hand he charges that O’Hagan acted against RAND’s findings in closing/moving companies as political exigencies required. Then Flood charges that O’Hagan excessively relied upon the RAND models to make decisions. Then he charges O’Hagan cut budgets, closed houses vindictively, with the belief that fire coverage wouldn’t suffer. Not one of these charges are grounded in fact. They are grounded only in Flood’s own narrative. This is not the writing of history or public policy.