FDNY Retirements

2 Pages 599 Words

The first wave of departures in the wake of the World Trade Center attack has hit the Fire Department, with 63 firefighters and supervisors requesting retirement last week.

A department order dated March 22 listed one battalion chief, nine captains, 13 lieutenants, one fire marshal and 39 firefighters.

"In my 33 years on the job I've never seen a department order with this many retirements," said Lt. Stephen Carbone, recording secretary of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the department is averaging about 40 retirement applications a week rather than the usual 40 a month and has gotten 500 applications since Jan. 1 [CORRECTION: As of Friday, the Fire Department has received 343 retirement applications since Jan. 1, officials said. Due to incorrect information supplied by the department, a story Thursday reported that 500 firefighters had submitted retirement applications since Jan. 1. The department now says 500 applications have been submitted since Sept. 11. pg. A02 Q 3/31/02]. Carbone and other union officials said the surge in retirements is due in part to higher pensions from extensive overtime in the past six months.

It also is due, they said, to pressure from the families of firefighters who do not want them to continue in a line of work that cost 343 firefighters their lives in one day.

Another factor, more difficult to assess, is that some firefighters simply have worn down and become dispirited after the loss of so many comrades, according to some union officials.

"The money from the pension tells them they have to go - that and the families," Carbone said.

Figures compiled by the union show that 61 officers attended seminars in January for officers who definitely are retiring. That compares with 21 in January 2001 and 11 in January 2000.

There were similar increases in February, when 44 attended, compared with 21 last year. And 70 retiring offic...