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by MELISSA GRACE
As the FDNY announced it will staff a new Staten Island firehouse, Brooklyn and Queens communities that lost entire engine companies two years ago cried foul yesterday.
"We need an increase, not a decrease in firefighters," said Beatrice Jones, chairwoman of Bedford-Stuyvesant's Community Board 3, which lost Engine 209 two years ago.
"We used to have vacant lots; now we have brand-new one-, two- and three-family homes," she said.
The outrage came a day after the FDNY announced that Engine 168 will begin operating in the Rossville firehouse on Staten Island June 1.
The structure, which will get four officers and 20 firefighters, was built last year but never staffed because of budget cuts.
The shift in position - for months the FDNY asserted the Rossville area needed no new firefighting resources - comes as election-year politics heats up.
Mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller has hammered Mayor Bloomberg - who must win Staten Island to be reelected - since the beginning of the year, demanding the empty house be staffed.
"We're going on the recommendations of the Fire Department; the mayor is not playing politics with public safety," said Bloomberg spokesman Robert Lawson.
FDNY officials cited increasing response times to emergency calls - which now exceed seven minutes - in Rossville and a population explosion there as the reasons for the shift in position.
"We expect to shave the response times by a minute and a half," said FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon of staffing the firehouse.
The four Brooklyn neighborhoods where firehouses were shuttered in 2003 also have seen rapid population growth - but they have not seen the huge response time increase experienced by Rossville.
Since Engine 212 in Greenpoint-Williamsburg closed, the average response to an emergency increased by 41 seconds, to 4 minutes, 38 seconds.
But because of that increase, "Fire fatalities have tripled," City Councilman David Yassky (D-Williamsburg) contended.
In 2002-2003, three people died in fires in the area - compared with nine who have died in fires since January 2004.
Jeremy Laufer, district manager of Sunset Park's Community Board 7, which lost Engine 278, said the area desperately needs more firefighters - and cops.
"We have one less firehouse," he said. "We have fewer police officers - despite the fact that we've had an increase in population of over 20%."
Of the six engines shuttered, Long Island City's Engine 261 has seen the biggest rise in response times - to 5 minutes, 26 seconds.
"When you close firehouses, response times go up and you put peoples lives at risk," said Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside), who demanded the mayor reopen all the shuttered firehouses.
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