By Rachel Geizhals
Special to Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BUSHWICK — The FDNY’s plan to cancel night shifts at several firehouses — including one in Bushwick, which was ravaged by arson in the 1970s — is reawakening bleak memories and igniting new fears for some New Yorkers.

Bushwick’s Himrod Street firehouse will be one of four to lose a night shift come mid-January as the FDNY reduces expenses to meet budget cuts. Company 124, the search-and-rescue unit at Himrod Street, will still serve round the clock, but Engine Company 271, the fire-dousing unit, will only operate from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“Fire service is like insurance,� said Rodrick Wallace, an epidemiologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute who has studied Bushwick’s fire history. “To save money, are you going to cancel your health insurance over the weekend?�

Most fire fatalities occur overnight while people are sleeping, Wallace said, and serious blazes are most common in overcrowded, under-maintained neighborhoods like Bushwick. Service cuts led to Bushwick’s downfall in the 1970s, said Wallace, culminating in the aftermath of the 1977 blackout when the neighborhood was overrun with looters and arsonists. The consequences this time could be similarly severe, especially because an economically distressed Bushwick is still rebuilding, he said. FDNY spokesman Steve Ritea, however, said services citywide will not be significantly disrupted by the night shift cuts in four boroughs — the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and Brooklyn — or by the closing of the firehouse on Governor’s Island. The reduction amounts to less than 1 percent of fire operations in the entire city.

“It’s not something anyone likes to do,� Ritea said, adding that civilian fire death rates are much lower than in decades past.

The FDNY considered many factors when determining which operations to eliminate. In Bushwick’s case, there are four firehouses within a mile of the Himrod Street unit. Himrod Street had fewer night calls than other companies, Ritea said.

Community Board 4 District Manager Nadine Whitted said FDNY representatives told her the firehouse will always be staffed by a ladder company, and there will be a 20-second difference in response time. But Whitted still has her doubts. “Any time they cut an essential service in my district, I get nervous,� she said.

Citywide Impact

Bushwick residents aren’t the only ones who are concerned. Carin Crow of Manhattan, who was active in No Fire Cuts, a group that protested the reduction of fire operations several years ago, predicted the closings will have citywide impact.

Units sometimes work in other districts, Crow said. Also, during large fires, companies from other boroughs may be relocated, she noted.

“The Fire Department covers New York City like a safety net,� said Crow. “Any time you close something or take away equipment, you compromise the safety net.�

Wallace said that because New York City is a terrorist target, “it’s as if London is closing fire companies during the Blitz.� But Ritea said it is unlikely that night closures of four companies will hurt the FDNY’s reaction to a terror attack.

Kurt Hill of the Williamsburg advocacy group The People’s Firehouse, formed during an earlier firehouse fight in the 1970s, said closing Engine Company 271 at night creates the “setting for a very tragic situation.� The area around Engine 271 includes Wyckoff Heights Hospital, knitting mills, paper goods warehouses, schools, houses of worship, and an ambulette service garage that houses multiple oxygen tanks, he said.

Bushwick’s empty lofts and studios are also susceptible to accidental arson by squatters, said Adam Schwartz, an urban planning teacher who organized Up From Flames, a 2007 exhibit about Bushwick’s recovery from the 1977 blackout. Schwartz fears that businesspeople who invested in Bushwick real estate before the downfall of the housing market could torch their property for profit, just as many landlords did in the 1970s.

Could Unite the Neighborhood

However, on a positive note, the canceled night shift might indirectly help the neighborhood by uniting the diverse area, according to some community advocates.

Community board member Laura Braslow said this decade’s mass migration of young artists and hipsters to Bushwick, which previously was dominated by Latinos and African-Americans, introduced a “politically charged situation.� Braslow, who is active in arts organizations herself, attributes the tension to cultural, socioeconomic and class differences, economic pressures and competition for space.

Arts transplants tend to come wide-eyed “as if they’re discovering a new planet� without respecting Bushwick’s history, said Braslow. “It’s very colonialist.�

But in a neighborhood that everyone believes is high-need and under-served, fire safety is common ground.

“This may be the beginning of a wonderful friendship between Bushwick’s newer and older residents,� said John Dereszewski, who served as board manager for Community District 4 in the late 1970s.

“The people who lived through the ’70s know how horrible fires can be,� Dereszewski said. “It’s an area where people can work together. Both the new and old communities in Bushwick see the importance of fire safety.�

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