Michael Gartland, Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
(TNS)
Outgoing FDNY Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh can “hang around” as long as she likes, Mayor Adams said Tuesday, brushing aside allegations that her decision to resign stemmed from a lack of support from his office.
“I told her, ‘You can be commissioner as long as you want in the FDNY, and if you want to still hang around, there’s other roles I need done,” Adams said at a press conference in City Hall.
Kavanagh announced Saturday she would be stepping down as fire commissioner to embark on her “next professional challenge.”
Yet sources within the department claim her departure comes after nearly three years of butting heads with the department’s staff chiefs, a handful of whom are suing her.
In recent months, Kavanagh had “lost touch with the membership,” one FDNY source said.
“She was becoming a bit more of a divisive figure,” the source said. “There were a lot more negative stories coming out of the department and that got the attention of the mayor.”
Kavanagh will remain with the department for the next few months to help the city’s new fire commissioner get up to speed.
“When she’s ready to transition to her next role, she’ll come in and say, ‘Eric, I’m ready to transition into my next role,’” Adams said. “If that’s outside the administration or inside the administration, that’s fine with me. She did exactly what I needed for her to do, and I think that she’s a great, great leader. And so it’s up to her.”
Adams hasn’t named a replacement for Kavanagh, but sources close to the decision predict he will pick a man of color for the spot, insiders said.
One person named as a possible successor is Dr. Kwame Cooper, who was named the department’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. Cooper had been offered the job once before, but turned it down, a well-placed source within the FDNY said.
As Adams searches for a replacement, the FDNY unions have put together a wish list of priorities they want the new leader of the country’s largest fire department to focus on.
Bringing back a five-man engine crew and focusing on the rising number of cancer deaths among firefighters have made the top of a short list from the Uniformed Firefighters Association as well as the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.
“We look forward to working with the new commissioner. An agency as dynamic and vital as the FDNY requires strong leadership that adapts to the ever-changing risks we face on the fireground,” James Brosi, president of the FDNY’s Uniformed Fire Officers Association said, adding that the “next commissioner must immediately prioritize the plague of lithium-ion battery fires.”
FDNY officials said Kavanagh was on the front lines of the fight against lithium-ion battery fires. She reconfigured department resources and personnel to inform the public about their dangers and encouraged e-bike owners to charge their batteries outside. At the same time, she had the fire marshals ramp up inspections of e-bike shops and lobbied both City Hall and then Congress to ban the sale of batteries not certified by Underwriters Laboratories or other testing labs.
As a result, injuries and deaths related to lithium-ion batteries have dropped considerably this year, FDNY officials said.
As of Monday, 52 people were injured and one person died from fires due to exploding lithium-ion battery packs. This time last year, 85 people had been injured and 13 people died, the FDNY said.
The number of fires remained roughly the same at around 120, but the FDNY noted that the number of fires inside homes or buildings dropped this year, while the number of lithium-ion batteries to occur outside have increased.
“This indicates that people are hearing our safety messaging and changing their behaviors,” an FDNY spokeswoman said, adding that more and more people are now keeping their e-bikes and scooters outside their homes.
The Uniformed Fire Association hopes the new commissioner lobbies to bring back “the fifth firefighter on NYC engine companies in order to reduce response times.”
“By having increased staffing you can lower response times,” Andrew Ansbro, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association said. “They will also have no choice but to take a strong stance on reversing Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to close firehouses which over time has resulted in increased response times, due to the loss of resources.”
The city had agreed to return the fifth firefighter to the engine companies in 2018, but the extra member was pulled again to make up sick leave numbers and other personnel issues.
In March of 2023, a half-dozen experienced FDNY brass filed an ageism lawsuit against Kavanagh and the city, claiming they were harassed, maligned and ultimately demoted because they seemed too old in Kavanagh’s eyes. Each plaintiff was between 54 and 62 years old when the complaint was filed in March 2023.
The department refuted the claims, arguing that, as of February, the average age of an FDNY staff chief is 57 years old. A deputy chief, which would replace the staff chiefs, is just 56 — a year younger.
Adams admitted that breaking in as the first female commissioner at the FDNY was never going to be easy.
“When you’re taking leadership positions like she did, these institutions are tough. She went into an institution that historically didn’t even have women in there,” he said. “We are breaking barriers, and when you break barriers, there’s a lot of discomfort.”
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