They've shown up in the past at Giuliani's presidential events. Today, they’re gathering in Bay Ridge, and they have plans to follow him nationwide starting sometime around January, according to Jim Riches, a deputy chief with the fire department whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

“We have all the UFA, the UFOA, and the fire members are all behind us -- the International Association of Fire Fighters,” said Riches. “And we’re going to be out there today to let everybody know that he’s not the hero that he says he is.”

The group’s complaints center on the faulty radios used by the fire department that day and what they say was a lack of coordination at Ground Zero.

And Riches disputes the notion that Giuliani provided any form of leadership on September 11 or in the days following.

“If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I’d love to hear it. All he did was give information on the TV”

“He did nothing,” Riches continued. “He stood there with a TV reporter and told everyone what was going on. And he got it from everybody else down at the site.”

"There is no one who respects firefighters and first responders more than Rudy Giuliani."

It's in response to a draft letter a national fire fighters union drafted, which urged their colleagues to say "hell no" to Giuliani's presidential campaign.

The debate among people who are supposed to be Giuliani's biggest supporters -- fire fighters and first responders -- has a swift boat quality to it.

The letter Giuliani's people sent out is after the jump.

-- Azi Paybarah

To America's Firefighters:

No American will ever forget the terrorist attacks of September 11th. As a firefighter, I know the courage and sacrifice the firefighters and first responders showed that day to rescue our friends and loved ones. I also greatly respect the leadership by our public officials. One of those people was Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

There is no one who respects firefighters and first responders more than Rudy Giuliani. That's why I was deeply disappointed and disheartened to learn of the recent partisan political activities by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).

Those of us who have worked with him know that Rudy Giuliani has always been a steadfast and unrelenting supporter of firefighters and first responders. The IAFF's accusations in its "draft letter," which made its way into the hands of the media, flies in the face of the facts. It is offensive and inaccurate.

Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter than Rudy Giuliani and I am proud to join thousands of firefighters across the country in supporting him.

Sincerely,

Lee Ielpi
FDNY, Retired

The most significant common trait if the new staffers, despite my earlier assertion, isn't that the legislative experience they have, but the experience they have working directly for the mayor.

Also, for the first time, they'll have their own press office, which should help churn out some informative stories about what's happening in Albany when everything changes.

-- Azi Paybarah

Earlier this year, Michael Calderone wrote:

After it took 140 firemen to put out the main blaze, the FDNY said: the fire "appears suspicious."

UPDATE: WCBS-TV is reporting that authorities are suspicious because (a) the fire "began at around 2:30 in the morning" and (b) the townhouse "was not occupied; it was in the process of being renovated."

- Max Abelson

The New York City Fire Department has released its annual fundraising campaign, the 2007 "FDNY Calendar of Heroes." It features pictures of hot, shirtless firefighters, and is photographed by Cary Hazlegrove, who lives not in New York but on Nantucket Island.

According to blogger Andy Towle, among those photographed in the calendar is Tom Westman. Mr. Westman was the winner of Survivor: Palau. He lives in Sayville, New York—about halfway out on Long Island. He left Williamsburg's Ladder 108 a year ago this week.

Last The Transom saw Mr. Westman, in July of 2005, he was on the Long Island Rail Road, heading into the City not to save lives—necessarily!—but for a meeting with NBC.

Alas, the elevator down was off limits due to an unexplained fire alarm. The choices were: either remain on the roof poolside with bellinis and the man in green who kept taking photos of us... or clatter down how many flights of stairs in heels?

We chose the stairs.

Clickety-clack. With lights and sirens, the FDNY heralded our arrival on the streets!

Kathleen and SASCHA.

Half a block over and we were at SASCHA restaurant. It just so happens that I knew Sascha before he was SASCHA - one of New York's most eligible male chefs. Sascha and I met each other when we were teenagers. We were in Santa Barbara. It was summer vacation...

SASCHA personally seated us immediately in the brasserie.

I told him I was getting married. "Oh that's too bad," he said. "Drinks?"

Yes, strawberry - rose petal - champagne drinks called "Aphrodisiacs," towers of oysters and shrimp and plenty of attention from the head chef.

Who needs a stripper when SASCHA's serving Aphrodisiacs?

Anthony Weiner flips the ceremonial coin toss at start of the 34th annual "Fun City Bowl" football game between the NYPD and FDNY at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

John McCain headlines a fundraiser for John Sweeney in Saratoga Springs.

On Sunday, the Queens Jewish Community Council will celebrate its 37th anniversary, honoring Melinda Katz and Barry Grodenchik in Fresh Meadows.

On Monday, The Foundation Center hosts a forum on sustaining community based health organizations with Brooklyn Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham.

—Nicole Brydson

Last Sunday sixty people were evacuated from a couple of buildings at 345 and 347 West 16th Street because of a fire. And then, after the FDNY extinguished the blaze, they discovered that sections of the buildings were crumbling. Now the tenants have to wait till the building's shored up before they can move back in. (What about the pets?!)

Now residents are telling the local news that the landlord--Benedict Properties of Great Neck, N.Y., according to PropertyShark--hasn't been providing adequate heat nor hot water. Most tenants won't even speak on the record, fearing retribution from the landlord.

According to PropertyShark, there are literally hundreds of building violations for these two properties. Granted, some of them date to 1977, but recent ones include failure to provide hot water, faulty smoke detectors and fire escapes, and "vermin mice" and "vermin roaches."

Ah, Chelsea! Good to know you're not totally going yuppie.

(Via BlogChelsea, CBS 2)

-Matthew Grace

The substance in question wasn’t formaldehyde that leaked from some Damien Hirst shark tank after competing buyers came to blows in an effort to take it home. Rather, the workers were exposed to mercury after a grandfather clock they were unpacking at the 1334 York Avenue location at 10:20 a.m. was discovered to be leaking.

The area was sealed off, and the workers—three males age 35, 38 and 44—were decontaminated, along with E.M.S. workers who responded to the scene. Then the Sotheby’s employees, complaining of headaches, were removed to New York Presbyterian–Weill Cornell Hospital.

The contaminated area was scrubbed by Sotheby’s HazMat team (who knew Sotheby’s had a HazMat team?) in conjunction with an FDNY HazMat team, and the area was deemed safe.

In a separate incident at Sotheby’s that occurred on Oct. 11 but wasn’t reported to the police until Dec. 2, $50,000 worth of various wines consigned to the auction house went missing from a storage area. A security video of the space revealed no suspicious activity.

Mug Shots

Fists, or rather mugs, were flying on Fifth Avenue and 81st Street, according to cross complaints filed at the 19th Precinct on Dec. 5. The victim in the first report, the employer, told the police that her housekeeper grabbed a coffee mug out of her hand and threatened to strike her with it. Fearing for her safety, the boss tried to grab it back, struggling with her coffee-cup-brandishing assailant. In the process of doing so, she says, she fell to the floor and injured her neck. However, her injury didn’t prevent her from getting to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was treated and released.

Her employee, unsurprisingly, has a drastically different take on the incident. She says that her boss was the one wielding the mug with deadly precision. She claims that her boss hit her over the head with the crockery, then threw hot tea in her face, causing a minor abrasion—and that she has a bump on her head to prove it.

She was also removed to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she apparently didn’t run into her boss. The employer was said to have fled the apartment in a taxicab. The worker, a 44-year-old Queens resident, had high blood pressure and was suffering from chest pains as a result of the incident. However, she might also have the last word: In her complaint, the employer put her age as 37; her housekeeper, who ought to know, says she’s actually 40.

Brown-Bagging It

Perhaps it’s no surprise that anyone who decides to take his bike for a ride at 4 a.m., as one East 94th Street resident did on Nov. 13, has a surfeit of courage—either that, or he doesn’t mind getting mugged. The victim was standing at the corner of 94th Street and Madison Avenue at that desolate hour when a male approached him and stated, “Give me your money. I have a gun.”

And to prove it, he produced a brown paper bag. “No,” his unimpressed victim observed, “you have a paper bag.”

The perp admitted that, yes, he was indeed carrying a paper bag, but the gun was inside the bag.

The bicyclist either didn’t believe him or felt physical activity was the answer to his insomnia, because he grabbed the lock off his bike and struck his assailant on the left side of the head with it. That took the fight out of the attacker, who was last seen fleeing toward Fifth Avenue.

Dangerous Urges

Before starting to take incriminating photographs of crooks trying to disable MetroCard machines, as one token-booth clerk did at the 77th Street and Lexington Avenue subway stop on Nov. 23, you probably ought to ask yourself whether you’ll need to leave the bullet-proof safety of your booth to go to the bathroom before either the crooks disperse or the cops arrive.

That’s the mistake a 56-year-old transit employee made at 4:17 p.m. after she snapped pictures of a couple of perps messing with the machines so that they could sell passengers turnstile “swipes.”

“I’m going to fuck you up when you come out of there,” one of the suspects threatened.

And come out she did—because she apparently couldn’t hold it any longer. One of the bad guys grabbed her while the other punched her and pushed her against the booth. The municipal employee also suffered a bruise when she hit her head against a step. And one of the thieves threw a bottle at her, the vessel hitting her in the leg and breaking into pieces.

The good thing about attacks at busy subway stations at the start of the afternoon rush hour is that there tend to be cops in the vicinity, as there were in this case. The officers arrived promptly and arrested the crooks, one 16, the other 18, for assault.

The solution is the city's most expensive capital project ever: the $6 billion, 60-mile- long water tunnel No. 3. The only problem is, the tunnel isn't done yet. And while a project of this scale could be expected to take a few years, it's worth noting that when work was begun on tunnel No. 3, John Lindsay was Mayor. Twenty-three workers have lost their lives in the tunnel. At the current funding and pace, it won't be completed until 2020. Which means 15 more years of hoping that tunnels Nos. 1 and 2 will defy common sense and remain intact. (If you live in Manhattan, say a special prayer for tunnel No. 1: It brings in 90 percent of the borough's water. It began operation the same year the U.S. entered World War I.) A study commissioned by the city concluded: "One can only hope and pray that no major conflagrations will occur in the meantime and that city tunnels 1 and 2 will continue to function despite their age and no opportunity for maintenance." That report was issued over 30 years ago.

The failure of the city, state and federal government to spend whatever it takes to get tunnel No. 3 operating as soon as possible is shocking. The sand hogs who are digging the tunnel through the bedrock are working around-the-clock shifts; even so, they can only advance about 100 feet on a good day. The Bush administration, along with Albany and City Hall, share a responsibility to devote billions of dollars in equipment and manpower to this urgent task. Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton should use their visibility and influence to move tunnel No. 3 to the forefront of the agenda. A water crisis in New York City would have a serious economic impact on the national economy, comparable to-and possibly worse than-Sept. 11. Experts estimate that it would take at least a year to dig down and repair a collapse in one of the tunnels. That would be a year in which millions of New Yorkers would have no running water, turning America's foremost city-the country's financial capital-into a disaster zone. The chaos and cost of bringing a billion gallons of water a day into New York on trucks would be staggering.

This is a national crisis in the making, and it demands the immediate, full attention of city, state and federal officials.

The Greatest Lawn

One of New York's greatest success stories is the restoration of Central Park over the past two decades. A dangerous eyesore in the 1970's, the park has reclaimed its former glory, fulfilling Frederick Law Olmsted's vision of a true oasis for New Yorkers, thanks to the efforts of the city along with the private, nonprofit Central Park Conservancy, which now provides more than 85 percent of the annual $20 million operating budget. One of the most remarkable transformations involves the Great Lawn. Where it was once a dusty, negligible spot best avoided, its 13 acres are now carpeted with lush Kentucky bluegrass, thanks to an $18.2 million restoration in 1997.

In order to maintain the Great Lawn's pristine condition, the Parks Department recently proposed that events drawing more than 50,000 people should be strictly prohibited, and those in the neighborhood of 50,000 limited to only six per year, with four of those slots going to free concerts by the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. The ruling has caused an outcry among those who wish to hold massive political rallies or large-scale concerts, which have drawn as many as 500,000 people in the past.

The city's decision is right on target. Large events-particularly rock concerts and political rallies, where people are standing and shuffling instead of sitting, as they do at classical-music concerts-do grave harm to the grass. It can take two months to repair the damage, rendering the lawn unusable for an entire summer. And after a rock concert that drew 80,000 people in 2003, four of the lawn's softball fields were out of commission for the season.

To hand over the lawn to outside political groups and rock promoters would be a disservice to New Yorkers-who are, after all, the park's primary users-and the tourists who flock here. More than 250,000 people stroll through Central Park on a summer weekend, enjoying its 26,000 trees, 150 acres of lakes and streams, and 58 miles of meandering pedestrian paths. To allow the lawn to be trampled into disrepair would be a crime. Meanwhile, the city can still accommodate large crowds as needed: The Reverend Billy Graham is planning a major three-day rally in Flushing Meadows Park.

Central Park may be the greatest example of what municipal government can do to improve the quality of urban life. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe deserve credit for protecting the Great Lawn for the benefit of all New Yorkers.

Battle of the Badges

The conflict between the NYPD and the FDNY over jurisdiction in emergency situations has a long and sordid history. It dates back to the days when the city's volunteer firefighters battled each other for the honor and privilege of putting out a raging blaze. More recently, police officers and firefighters from elite rescue and emergency units have had physical confrontations over command and control of accident sites.

These turf battles may seem colorful when viewed from afar, but as we learned on Sept. 11, coordination between these two proud institutions is vital in the age of international terrorism. That's why Mayor Bloomberg recently clarified the roles which the police and firefighters will be expected to play in emergencies like a biochemical terrorist attack. According to the plan, the police will be in charge of such incidents.

The Fire Department is not pleased. The chief of department, Peter Hayden, said the new response plan is no better than the one that was in place on Sept. 11. The chief's criticisms are not easily dismissed: He was in command at the north tower on Sept. 11, and saw firsthand the chaos and faulty coordination that hampered the rescue efforts and doomed so many of his brave colleagues. True, Chief Hayden's department has long been in charge of incidents involving hazardous materials and has special units for just such disasters. There's no question that the Fire Department has the expertise required.

The questions are of command and coordination, and the Mayor has decided, properly, that the Police Department will be in charge of the incident site. The Fire Department has unrivaled skill in responding to a HAZMAT disaster. But the Police Department is best outfitted for the assignment of coordinating responses, investigating the scene, securing its perimeter and controlling traffic and crowds.

It goes without saying that every New Yorker hopes that the Mayor's new emergency-management plan will never have reason to be put into effect. And Chief Hayden's unhappiness must be addressed. His years of experience and his own personal heroism command attention.

In the end, however, the Mayor's instincts are correct. What's more, the city must move quickly to make sure that everybody understands the new rules. As we learned on Sept. 11, faulty coordination and uncertain lines of command can-and will-cost lives.