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by WILLIAM MURPHY
A Ryder rental truck being used as an emergency fire vehicle did not respond to a report of a building collapse in Brooklyn yesterday because it could not get a police escort, the fire union said.
The truck, still bearing the Ryder name but with FDNY markers, has been in use for a month but has yet to make an emergency run, the union officials said.
The backup unit — crammed with shoring equipment and lumber — was dispatched at 3:26 p.m. to a building collapse in Brooklyn, according to John Kelly, the borough trustee for the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
The promised police escort to ensure the unit's safety was not provided, and the unit never left the firehouse on St. Johns Place, he said.
Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon confirmed that the division commander had requested the unit, but that the request was canceled a few minutes later because "the unit was not needed."
Gribbon said a telephone call was made to the Police Department but that the request for an escort was never denied.
"We are working out all of these issues here," Gribbon said.
A Ryder rental truck was used in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and firefighters fear responding without the promised police escort. They said they were pulled over by police as it was being delivered to the firehouse in early August.
The Fire Department said the rental truck is being used as a backup until the department gets two new units next month.
"This is just a joke. The Ryder truck has never moved. It's been sitting in the same place for a month," Kelly said.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc
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