Published 21:50, March the 19th, 2009
Union fights budget with fire after crash
CENTER CITY. Just how heated is the rhetoric going to get between the city and its unions?
Consider that Thursday's crash between two fire trucks that sent nine firefighters to the hospital was blamed on Mayor Michael Nutter eliminating seven fire companies last year by Local 22 President Brian McBride.
"Those two companies were responding to calls they never would have responded to before," McBride said. "They should have still been in their firehouse instead of responding to any of these calls."
Commissoner Lloyd Ayers called McBride's statement "absurd" and said a third fire call on St. James Street at the same time meant all available ladders in the Center City area were called into duty.
A ladder truck and engine, stationed at 21st and Market streets, collided at about 11:20 a.m. at Ninth and Lombard streets as both trucks were heading to a fire call on Wharton Street, fire officials said.
Most of the firefighters were all expected to return home Thursday, though Ladder 9 Lt. Richard Prather may have remained in a hospital overnight for his injuries, fire officials said.
The two companies initially responded to a call at Seventh and Market streets before being called to the 2200 block of Wharton Street minutes later, fire officials said.
"It doesn’t have anything to do with ladder 11 or ladder 1 who would normally respond with those [fire calls]," Ayers said. "It was a lot of incidents going on at one time."
Ayers said the investigation would likely conclude that the drivers of the two trucks did not properly proceed through the intersection when they struck each other.
