Lagging urgency

To the editor:

Mayor Adams' Fiscal Year 2025 management performance report was published. The news was not good for any of us who might need emergency medical treatment (See pages 76 and 77).  Let's hope a loved one is not too far gone when help arrives.

Highlighting the problem, just 377 FDNY EMS ambulances were in service on the day the report was released. That was 28 fewer than a year earlier. Fewer ambulances means it takes longer to get to seriously ill and injured New Yorkers. In May, Local 2507’s vice president, Michael Greco, a paramedic, told the City Council, "It seems the mayor or somebody is not listening to the screams."  

Basic Life Support ambulances can't run without EMTs.  Recently, FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker was quoted:  "People just don't want to be EMTs…. The next 1,500 firefighters in New York City will come from EMS…. I don’t think we have 300 that want to come in."

The Emergency Medical Services were folded into the FDNY in 1996. Five years ago, Council Members Adrienne Adams and Justin Brannan described the main problem — pay — writing, the " tremendous wage gap [between the first responders in the same agency] sends a clear message to rank-and-file EMS … they are second-class citizens in the eyes of our city."

In 2021, as Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams and Brannan wrote, "While the goal was that workers from both agencies would eventually reach pay parity, the disparity in pay has only grown, more than tripling."

 How can New Yorkers expect anyone to become an EMT, or remain long in the FDNY EMS, when the known problems are never addressed? 

Helen Northmore