Firefighters, police officers and public workers employees showed up at Buffalo's Common Council chambers Tuesday in a show of support for resolutions filed by lawmakers aimed at making sure front-line workers are properly equipped during snow emergencies like last month’s Christmas weekend blizzard.
“Even though you cannot directly relate the age of the fleet to anything that happened (during the blizzard), we had rigs that were absolutely broken down. We had a ladder truck that was stuck up in the air for five days,” said Vincent Ventresca, president of Buffalo Professional Firefighters IAFF Local 282.
He was among about 100 union members of the Buffalo fire, police and public works departments who attended the Council session during which South District Christopher Scanlon detailed his resolutions.
Scanlon asked for a full inventory of vehicles in the police, fire and public works fleets, which the council member described as “antiquated to say the least.”
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“You have equipment that is nearing 20 years old in some of these departments,” Scanlon said.
In the Fire Department, there’s equipment with "cracked frames and again they’re old," he said. "Same thing within the Department of Public Works, whether it is plows, packers and other equipment on both the streets and sanitations sides of the department. And we’ve all had these conversations for the last couple of years about the Police Department, as well.”
Scanlon has proposed using American Rescue Plan funds to purchase additional equipment for the fire, police and public works departments. He called for buying sidewalk snow removal equipment, fire trucks, SUVs with four-wheel drive for Buffalo police as well as snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles and "other necessary equipment to right-size the departments.”
The city’s Finance Department should amend the plan and file purchase orders for the equipment no later than Feb. 2, he has said.
If not, he wants the Common Council to reject any further spending of American Rescue Plan funds.
Niagara Council Member David Rivera on Tuesday suggested looking into using FEMA money to purchase equipment.
Equipment problems have been brought up before with the administration, Scanlon said.
“These are conversations that I have been having for years," Scanlon said. "It’s equipment that these unions and the people in this room have been asking for for years. This equipment is broken. A lot of it is so old that if parts do break, they don’t make the parts anymore. I fear that we are going to run into a situation where someone is horribly hurt or someone dies because of it.”
Ventresca said the older pieces of equipment pose risks.
“It’s about every day," he said. "It’s about the equipment that we have that’s not capable of doing the job. We had multiple pumpers that couldn’t even pump. The equipment is timing out, and it’s ancient and we had a fire on Glenwood Avenue Sunday night that the apparatus in the front couldn’t operate.”
From Hoover Beach to the Outer Harbor to Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park and the Bird Island Pier, homes and recreation areas felt the brunt of the storm.
The city has already purchased a new piece of equipment, an ASAP MedStat Ambulance, for the Fire Department. The mini-ambulance has tracking capabilities and can navigate side streets and hard-to-reach areas if a regular ambulance can't.
The city approved the $100,000 purchase last November as part of the city's $26 million capital budget for 2023.
Scanlon’s resolutions, adopted by the Council on Tuesday, will be further discussed in the Council’s Community Development Committee next week.
