Daily Archives: April 18, 2012

Accident victims saved despite fights between New York Police and Fire Departments

New York — Three workers were injured in a work accident when the scaffold that they were standing on gave way. The victims were 17 stories up, on the side of a building in Manhattan, doing some brick repair work. The scaffolding broke away and the workers were left hanging from their harnesses while the Fire Department of New York and New York Police Department worked to rescue the victims. Apparently, the 2 agencies did not coordinate their emergency rescue efforts and this has some rescue experts concerned. They say that rescue efforts in the case of an accident like this must be coordinated so as to prevent further injury to both the accident victim and the rescuers alike. Independent actions by the police and fire departments can conflict with the efforts of the other agency and lead to serious injury or death. In this case, the police’s emergency service unit tried rescuing the workers by repelling down from the roof. However, the fire department conducted a rescue from one of the windows nearby. Most concerning to New York City officials, is that this power struggle between who is responsible and who is in charge during a life threatening accident, was supposed to have been solved after the problems encountered in the emergency response to the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This leaves many observers concerned that well over 10 years after the terrorist assault on New York City, the police and fire commanders have not learned their lesson. The communication and coordination problems that were exposed in 2001 should have been dealt with by now in order to help save more lives, and prevent causing injury and death during an accident. An accident lawyer in the city notes that these types of problems occur at all kinds of accidents, like car accident and construction accident scenes. It is the responsibility of the emergency responders to do their job right and remain professional at all times, otherwise they may be liable for the outcomes due to their negligence. Find out more about this high-rise rescue here.