by JONATHAN LEMIRE
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta will tell the City Council Wednesday that the FDNY's revamped building inspection program has not led to an increase in fire response times, the Daily News has learned.
But the firefighters union Tuesday questioned the FDNY's statistics and charged that the department is stonewalling the investigation into the Deutsche Bank blaze that killed two firefighters in August.
A probe revealed that the local firehouse had not been checking the toxic tower undergoing demolition just yards away, prompting the FDNY to add three additional hours of inspections a week starting Nov. 5.
The war of words between the FDNY and the union escalated last week when the Fire Department sent a memo to all firehouses boasting that response times to structural fires dropped to 4 minutes, 24 seconds last month, down from 4:31 in November 2006 and 4:36 during that month in 2005.
The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The News, also blasts Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy for making "false and baseless claims" about the inspections and the FDNY's alleged lack of cooperation with the Manhattan district attorney probe.
But Cassidy shot back, accusing the FDNY brass of not voluntarily talking to investigators from the district attorney's office and of hiring an outside criminal defense attorney - the first such hire in department history.
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