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Once again, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's new emergency response plan has encountered nasty criticism - this time at a City Council hearing on Tuesday. That's no great shock, because the Bloomberg protocol does little to clear up basic control questions at disaster scenes. It's a mess waiting to happen. But it does seem odd that the mayor is willing to live with this bad idea instead of promptly moving to fix it.
The question he faces is this: How do you cut redundancy between two proud and excellent agencies - the New York Fire Department and New York Police Department? And how do you then get these two rivals to work together smoothly as a team in the event of another terrorist attack?
Bloomberg punted. He let the NYPD keep its hazardous material unit and ditto the FDNY. Which agency will call the shots in the event of another 9/11? Both, sort of. The FDNY will take charge of life-saving. The NYPD will handle assessment, investigation and overall control of the scene.
But what happens when the FDNY makes assessments of its own as it does its job? The plan is a recipe for confusion. New York is the only major American city to put haz-mat operations under police control. Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) worries that the plan will lead to decisions by committee at emergency scenes - a troubling specter. Bloomberg should repair this lousy idea before it's too late.
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