UPDATE: Fire Station 2 closes

Saturday, March 7, 2009
 

BY PAUL BRUBAKER

CLIFTON – Fire Station 2 closed today with an early morning ceremony befitting a fallen comrade after months of negotiations and pleas to the City Council to rethink this year’s budget failed to save it.

Taps played while the American flag was lowered for the last time at 8 a.m. after a dispatcher’s radio call marked the end of the midnight shift.

“All companies be advised, Station 2 is now closed,” the dispatcher said as about 100 people listened in front of the station on Dumont Avenue. Most of them wore blue jeans and navy blue sweatshirts bearing the Fire Department’s insignia.

The station’s closing was the result of citywide staff cuts planned in December that included 16 firefighter jobs throughout the department. A dozen firefighters were laid off, and four others retired.

As the station closed, Firefighter Bill McMahon hung a banner from the top of the station that took a twist on the city’s identifying catch phrase.

“Firehouse closed by the city that cares?” the banner read.

“The camaraderie you had with the guys, it’s almost like a second family,” said Firefighter Robert Bollettino, 34, who worked in the department three years before being laid off.

Bollettino’s wife, Danielle, was at his side holding their 2½-year-old son, Robert.

She said the tears in her eyes resulted from worry about how they would make mortgage payments on the house they bought nearly two years ago. She said she also expected to spend less time with her children because she would have to go back to work.

“It’s going to be hard to make ends meet,” she said.

As firefighters and their families faced unemployment, the department’s leadership braced for the challenge of filling the void the closed station left behind.

“Somebody in this community is going to die,” said Robert De Luca, president of the local firefighters union.

The staff cuts meant that fewer firefighters, who also trained as emergency medical technicians, are available able to respond to cardiac arrests, asthma attacks and other urgent situations.

De Luca said Mayor James Anzaldi and City Council members will have blood on their hands as a result of cuts in a department that many firefighters at Station 2 said was already understaffed.

Anzaldi objected to De Luca’s assertion.

“It’s a terrible horrible thing to even make that kind of a statement to people that have been working for three months to try to make sure that this day didn’t come,” the mayor said by phone. “I’m still praying for complete cooperation from all of our employee organizations in order to avoid future layoffs.”

Fire Station 2 had covered an area from Colfax Avenue and Hazel Street, near Paterson, to Valley Road and Van Houten Avenue, near Montclair, to Deputy Fire Chief Thomas Lyons said. The station was assigned to be the first to respond to emergencies at the Daughters of Miriam Nursing Home and Clifton High School, among other sites, he said.

Now Fire Station 6, which near Routes 46 and 3 and the Garden State Parkway, will be covering most of the area.

 “That’s the busiest company in the city due to all the highways,” Lyons said.

Joseph Verderosa, who was appointed department chief yesterday, said he wasn’t sure how much the city could rely on departments in neighboring towns to help in emergencies, because other towns have their own economic problems.

“We’re just going to have to be very diligent in covering and responding as best as we can,” Verderosa said.

Additional pink slips were issued yesterday to more than 50 City Hall employees.

Bill Lavin, a state leader of the firefighters’ union said the Clifton local opted, against his advice, to make more than $500,000 in concessions to avoid layoffs. Instead of accepting, city officials pushed for concessions on medical benefits, he said.

Anzaldi said that the city needed $775,000 to keep the department whole, and that the union also wanted to extend the contract a year to 2012, with a guarantee that there would be no layoffs during the life of the contract.

“All we could promise was that there would be no more in 2009,” he said.

Reach Paul Brubaker at 973-569-7155 or brubaker@northjersey.com.