LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Compel AG to study Bronx fires

Posted

To the editor:

Since 1974, my husband and I have studied the 1970s cuts in fire service and their immediate and short-term consequences.

The gutting of fire service fell more heavily on the Bronx than on the other boroughs, and struck more deeply at the social, economic, political and public health and safety integrity and strength.

We are personally and professionally horrified at the signs of a gathering new wave of fires in the Bronx. We created the following petition, and invite Bronx residents to circulate it and sign it.

If any Riverdale Press readers wish to do that, they should email me at debwallace445@gmail.com.

We are petitioning state attorney general Letitia James after 17 people died in the recent fire at 333 E. 181st St., in Fordham Heights. The building had long-standing serious violations that were never fixed.

In 1990, 87 people died in the Happy Land Social Club fire — also in the Bronx — in a building with serious violations that allowed the arson to kill many more people than a violation-free building would have allowed.

Public policies and practices in the Bronx lead to deaths, injury, and loss of building units. The recent uptick in large Bronx fires hints of a possible new fire epidemic rooted in inadequate fire service.

For decades, hostile public policies targeted the Bronx. Before World War II, redlining affected the South and Central Bronx. After World War II, Robert Moses inflicted both massive Bronx evictions for urban renewal and relocation into the South and Central Bronx of evictees from other boroughs.

In the 1970s, the fire department stripped fire companies from the Bronx, especially the South and Central Bronx — a much greater reduction proportionately than any other borough suffered. Large areas of the Bronx lost between 50 and 80 percent of their housing units and population between 1970 and 1980 from the resulting fire epidemic.

This housing loss and population destabilization triggered a cascade of ills that echo in the borough to this day. The loss and destabilization led to the Bronx becoming the national epicenter of the first wave of COVID-19.

The Bronx remains a primary target for present and future destructive public policies based on “race,” ethnicity, socio-economic class, and political weakness, because of past decades of such policies and practices from all levels of government.

We ask the attorney general to conduct a thorough investigation of historic and present practices that led to and sustain the intolerable conditions in the Bronx. This investigation must produce a detailed publicly available report, including recommendations for alleviation.

We ask the attorney general to require appropriate state and local agencies to reform policies and practices immediately that impose unsafe conditions on the residents of the Bronx, such as inadequate fire service and building code enforcement.

We ask the attorney general to establish a long-term program for wide and deep reform of public policies and practices that adversely affect the Bronx disproportionately.

Deborah Wallace

Have an opinion? Share your thoughts as a letter to the editor. Make your submission to letters@riverdalepress.com. Please include your full name, phone number (for verification purposes only), and home address (which will not be published). The Riverdale Press maintains an open submission policy, and stated opinions do not necessarily represent the publication.
Deborah Wallace,

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