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American Morning

Leading FDNY In The Face Of Crisis

Aired January 07, 2002 - 08:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: He has a daunting task ahead of him to restore the morale and to rebuild the department while facing severe budget cuts. He has never worn the uniform, but it appears that Scoppetta has the respect of those who do. Congratulations. Thank you very much for joining us.

NICHOLAS SCOPPETTA, NEW YORK FIRE COMMISSIONER: Thank you for having me.

ZAHN: It's your first national interview.

SCOPPETTA: Yes it is.

ZAHN: I know so much has been written about the fact that you worked in creating a child foster system and never really had experience in the fire-fighting world before. How daunting of a task is that to come into the department at this time of its history?

SCOPPETTA: Well, of course it's a big challenge and there's a learning curve here that is pretty steep. But I've been in and out of government over the last 38 years. I've run large government agencies -- I know how government works. So that's what I bring to it. There have been a lot of exceptionally good fire commissioners who came from outside of the department because our job is not to get out there to fight the fires. We have 11,000 professionals who know how to do that.

It's to provide some leadership, protect the budget, get the most out of what we have, develop managers and that as a fact is the most severe challenge, I think, that I'm facing right now, because on 9-11 there were 343 members of the department killed. That included 89 senior officers including the chief of the department, the first deputy, commissioner, a lot of captains, lieutenants, battalion chiefs. That's a tremendous hit losing that many managers. So that's going to be the real challenge, I think, is rebuilding the management.

ZAHN: How long will that take?

SCOPPETTA: Well it's going to take awhile. We're staffing up the budget. Just New Year's Eve we graduated a little over 300 probationary -- probies, as they're called, to become firefighters and so we have a lot of new blood coming into the department. We anticipate training and graduating another 600, so we'll have a really strong fire-fighting force. From that whole mix, though, an existing commanders we'll have to rebuild the management structure.

ZAHN: You also talk about the challenge of protecting your budget at a time when there is a $4-billion shortfall. What does that mean to your department?

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: You know without a doubt you're going to have budget cuts and you're going to have to live with those.

SCOPPETTA: And we'll look for efficiencies. It's too soon to tell what it's going to mean. We don't even know what percentage for sure we'll be asked to contribute. But I think this mayor is extremely sensitive to the notion that the fire department, police department are really our first line of civil defense and I think he's going to do everything he can to keep us as strong as possible.

ZAHN: One last question for you sir, a lot was made of a front- page story in one of the local newspapers here, "The Daily News", about the use of handy-talkies by firefighters, and there is a belief that the use of those on 9-11 may have cost of some of the firefighters their lives because of a lack of a digital signal and the fact that they weren't effective. Any plans to replace the communication ...

(CROSSTALK)

SCOPPETTA: Sure, we're looking at that.

(CROSSTALK)

SCOPPETTA: Yes, we're looking at those radios because it's a question of using digital or analog and was the digital, which is a fine technology as sufficiently developed with those radios. That's all being looked at right now.

ZAHN: We appreciate you joining us on the debut of our show, and one of the first days of your job. Thank you very much for joining us.

SCOPPETTA: Thank you for having me.

ZAHN: Best of luck to you.

SCOPPETTA: Thank you.

ZAHN: And let your troops know we here stand in awe of their bravery.

SCOPPETTA: They're a wonderful group of people. They're spectacular.

ZAHN: Good luck to you. New Fire Commissioner of New York.

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