by ARI PAUL
When the New York Post a year ago wrote about the high number of Fire Department retirees going out with disability pensions, insinuating that this was a drain on city resources, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association at the time, John J. McDonnell, called for a boycott of the tabloid.
His successor, Alexander Hagan, didn't react as heatedly when the Post April 11 reported that 80 percent of Firefighters and fire officers who retired last year got a three-fourths pension for line-of-duty disabilities, which it called "exorbitant."
Cites Toll of Post-9/11 Search
"The pension is not so much for the firefighters as it is for the city to refresh the firefighting force with younger people," he said in reaction to the article. "The disability process is a rigorous process. Many people are denied the disability pension."
In addition to firefighting being an inherently dangerous job in which FDNY responders spend 20 years breathing smoke and being exposed to high heat, the recent spike in disability pensions, the fire unions have said, is a direct result of 9/11 and the months after it that firefighters spent searching for remains in the toxinfilled World Trade Center rubble.
"The fact that the number is so high is a testimony to how dangerous it is," Mr. Hagan said.
Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy said that the Post's assertions were especially stunning considering that the FDNY had released a report a few days earlier saying that responders who suffered lung ailments as a result of 9/11 haven't recovered.
"They seem to have forgotten about Sept. 11," he said of the Post. "There's a general attack on public-employee pensions and I think the Post focused on the Fire Department because we had the highest disability rate, but they left out all the facts and didn't want to have a balanced approach."
Mr. Cassidy said the Trade Centerrelated ailments were in addition to the stress firefighters normally face in their careers.
'The damage to knees and shoulders, it comes with the territory," he said.
Mr. Hagan suggested that there were bigger strains on city finances, such as the Unified Call Taker dispatch system, which FDNY unions accuse of several times sending fire companies to the wrong location, and the CityTime palm-scanner system, which has resulted in more than $700 million in consulting fees.
"If I were the editor of a major newspaper, I'd be investigating the failed UCT system and the failed CityTime system," he said. "I would look where there would appear to be excesses. There's only so much ink and [the Post] decided what would best sell newspapers."
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