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The film "Decade of Fire," that's being aired on PBS, seeks to blame the Bronx fire storm of the 1970s on "City government policies that left that borough...unprotected."
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The film "Decade of Fire," that's being aired on PBS, seeks to blame the Bronx fire storm of the 1970s on "City government policies that left that borough...unprotected."
THAT...is a LIE.
The truth is that the Bronx, Harlem and Central Brooklyn have long had some of the busiest and best Fire Companies in the City and they certainly did back then!
By comparison, Staten Island, a borough roughly equivalent in area to the Bronx, had about half the Bronx's fire protection...and that was more than sufficient for that relatively low crime, low fire activity borough.
In his excellent book, "The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City - and Determined the Future of Cities" (https://www.amazon.com/…/1594485062/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_W5…), Joe Flood chronicled how the RAND Corporation DID eliminate the 2nd sections of many of the City's busiest Fire Units, as the fiscal crisis broke over New York City, BUT that occurred in the mid 1970s, well into and even toward the end of that disastrous period.
Vincent Dunn, Thomas Kearney, Charlie McCarthy and others can speak to that firsthand.
Policies DON'T create behaviors, individuals DO.
There WERE indeed some Liberal city policies that inadvertently created incentives for arson.
At the time, insurance let an owner insure a property for whatever value the owner was willing to pay the premiums on. In that way, some unscrupulous store owners and landlords were able to insure their properties for far more than their market value. That was a disastrous policy and it was subsequently changed.
The black and Hispanic residents of the Bronx were NOT blamed for these arson abuses by store owners, certainly not within the FDNY & NYPD.
City welfare offices also had signs that anyone burned out of their residence would get $3,000 relocation money and be placed at the front of the line for the new public housing erected during the 1960s. Compounding that, the Red Cross, tasked with relocating the fire victims, were instructed only offer aid to those whose places suffered fire damage. Smoke and water damage DIDN'T count. As a result, many buildings experienced multiple fires virtually overnight, until the entire structure was considered condemned due to fire damage.
Incentives DO NOT "make" people do things.
Just as unscrupulous, immoral PROPERTY OWNERS saw profit in those flawed insurance laws, immoral, unscrupulous PEOPLE saw profit/advantage in being burned out of their apartments.
Everybody DIDN'T do it.
Blaming policies fashioned for a more moral and decent bygone age, for the selfish, destructive actions of some immoral people is hideously wrong.
It's the PEOPLE, NOT the POLICIES, or the PLACE.
The problem with the mass migration to New York City from the Deep South and Puerto Rico during the 50s and 60s was that it brought in an influx of very poor people, with very few skills that translated into New York's economy.
The result was that areas like central Brooklyn, the Bronx and other areas, were "ghettofied," resulting in compact areas with densely congested poverty, that bred unprecedented dysfunction and destruction.
It's a sad, but very true observation, that the urban dysfunction and destruction of that and subsequent eras is overwhelmingly the fault of PEOPLE...not any POLICIES.
I only WISH it could be said, "That isn't so."
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