New York City – Bloomberg Wants to Stamp Out Costly City Fire Alarm Boxes

New York City – Mayor Bloomberg wants to extinguish fire alarm boxes from city streets.

Bloomberg pitched the fiery move this week as part of his budget for fiscal year 2011, saying it would save FDNY $2.5 million.

Since 85% of calls made through the street boxes are false alarms, Bloomberg said, “In the days where everybody has cell phones … the city would be just as safe without them.”

Only 140 structural fires last year out of 26,666 were first called in through an alarm box – and phone calls on those fires came in after the boxes were pulled, according to the FDNY.

But a change in the law is needed to scrap the 15,000 boxes because in 1997 a federal judge said such a move violates the civil rights of the deaf.

The court decision came a year after then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the City Council agreed to shrink the outdated system. Other cities, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago have already yanked them.

City Hall argues there is new technology that allows the deaf to contact authorities quickly.

But the fire dispatchers union said relying exclusively on phones in an emergency is dangerous.

“We know the phone system is not dependable. On 9/11, for instance, the phones stopped working,” said David Rosenzweig, president of the fire dispatchers union.

FDNY officials say the boxes are costly to maintain and they’ll eliminate 19 electricians through attrition and cancel a contract with a private vendor by deactivating the system.