Gloucester Fire Department Deputy Chief Stephen Aiello now says the city's elementary schools are safe. That's good.
He also contends that he never said the schools were "unsafe," and says this newspaper was misleading the public to say last week that he did. That's not so good.
Perhaps Aiello never used the specific word "unsafe" in the debate between him and other city and school officials over the condition of Plum Cove and Beeman elementary schools. But here are a few things he said and did that are a matter of record. Readers can conclude for themselves what those words and actions mean.
After a fire drill at Beeman, in which Aiello said the alarms in the new modular building did not function when those in the original building did, he ordered a two-firefighter "detail" to be posted during all school hours. That order was withdrawn after Chief Barry McKay and the school principal agreed that staff in the original building would tell those in the modulars if there was an alarm.
Aiello, in a letter to the Times (Thursday, Sept, 18), said he never stated that the schools were unsafe. But later in the very same letter, he said the fact that the modular alarms didn't function, "... is a legitimate public safety issue." He added that, "some of the largest loss of life to fires in this country have occurred in elementary schools ..."
All this is supposed to mean that he thought the buildings were safe? Please. Simply assigning two firefighters to watch the school clearly meant that he thought the buildings were unsafe. That's common sense.
In response to an assertion on this page that the dispute over safety was actually more about firefighters trying to get more overtime pay by pressuring city officials to open the Bay View station full time, he said, "Nothing could be further from the truth." However, after Aiello sent out his report, Ward 4 Councilor Jackie Hardy called for an emergency City Council meeting to consider opening the Bay View station full time — a move that would vastly increase firefighter overtime.
Coincidence? Well, Gloucester residents can decide for themselves.
In his letter, Aiello says the Times' "false, negative editorializing has created community uproar that Mayor Carolyn Kirk is concerned about." To borrow a phrase from him, nothing could be further from the truth. Kirk's expression of concern over a community uproar came last Monday, in direct response to Aiello's report and his assignment of a firefighter detail to Beeman. A news story and then an editorial about it appeared Tuesday and Wednesday.
Any uproar is due to Aiello's report and actions — not the reporting or comments that followed.
