Emergency matters

To the editor:

Last year, the NYC Council unanimously passed a bill providing self-defense training and ballistic vests for FDNY EMTs and paramedics. Now Council members want to increase EMS mental health resources (“Proposal would increase mental health resources for EMS workers,” The Chief, this issue). Meanwhile, for decades, succeeding Councils have turned a blind eye to the real problem eviscerating the FDNY EMS.

For decades, every City Council has failed to ensure that mMayors and their Office of Labor Relations follow city law. The law unanimously passed in 2001 stipulated that, in contract talks, the city treat the FDNY EMS as the other uniformed services: Sanitation, corrections, police and fire. That never happened. Today, EMS pay has so deteriorated that after 5 ½ years on the job, an EMT's base salary is $59,534, while a sanitation worker's is $88,979.

FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker reported that EMS responded to 627,599 life-threatening emergencies in 2024. However, without EMTs and paramedics, enough ambulances don't run. Typically, on Monday, the FDNY ran only 400 of the 494 ambulances targeted to be in service. Although every year NYC collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in emergency medical treatment and ambulance fees from patients and their health insurance providers, when sick and injured New Yorkers call 911, they wait longer and sometimes die.

Last month, FDNY EMS union president, Oren Barzilay, yet again testified before a Council Committee. He said, ".three months from now, within a year period, I'm going to lose almost 30 percent of my members as they are leaving … to become firefighters earning six figures."

On March 14, the Council will hold hearings on the FDNY budget, including Emergency Medical Services money matters. Will Council members demand answers to well-researched and well-framed questions, getting to a major source of mental stress in the FDNY EMS?

Helen Northmore