By Tara Dooley, Staff Writer
Crotona Avenue resident Lydia Rivera and a state Supreme Court justice had similar messages for the city last week about plans to remove fire alarm boxes: Show us it's worth it.
"It makes sense because there are a lot of false alarms," Rivera said as she waited for a bus on Fordham Road. "But it also doesn't make sense; what if there isn't a phone?"
"They will have to convince me," she added.
It was the same message Justice Walter M. Schackman delivered Wednesday in a decision blocking a plan by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Fire Commissioner Howard Safir to remove the city's 16,300 alarm boxes, 2,651 of which are in the borough.
While the judge recognized the city's authority to take the boxes off the streets, he said the plan did not carefully consider all sides of the issue.
"The plan does not attempt to calculate the lives that may be lost and the injuries that may be suffered as a result of removing alarm boxes," Schackman ruled.
Under the city plan, residents would rely on an enhanced 911 system and cellular phones to report fires. According to the Fire Department, the alarm boxes are used mostly to report false alarms. Removing alarm boxes would save the city at least $4.9 million, officials said.
But some borough residents, such as Nancy Brockington, a nutritionist from Parkchester, are concerned that removing the alarm boxes would put people without telephones at risk.
"They should be staggered in areas where there would be dire need," she said.
According to Fire Department's statistics, six of the city's 10 community districts with the fewest household telephones are in the borough.
These districts -- Community Boards 1 through 6 -- make up most of the South and Central Bronx and include Melrose, Hunts Point, Longwood, Morrisania, Highbridge, Morris Heights, Fordham, East Tremont and West Farms. In these neighborhoods, less than 78.4 percent of households have telephones. In comparison, the lowest percentage of households with telephones in Queens districts is 92.3 percent.
In addition, public phones are not always reliable, said Rivera.
"Let's say someone is yelling, `Fire, fire,'" she said. "You run to the corner phone and it doesn't work."
Borough President Fernando Ferrer believes removing the alarm boxes would put people at risk.
"They can do it in certain areas, like midtown Manhattan or in sparsely populated residential areas," said Ferrer spokesman Clint Roswell. "But you can't do it in neighborhoods where phones are a commodity that is rare and not reliable."
Ferrer is also concerned that removing alarm boxes would discriminate against the poor, said Roswell.
But Schackman's decision in the case, which was brought by a church group, found the city's plan did not discriminate because it would remove all alarm boxes in the city, not just in certain neighborhoods.
Safir said the Fire Department would appeal the decision.