Phila. firefighters take case to airwaves

Taking its fight against fire-service cuts to a new arena, the Philadelphia firefighters union will today begin airing one-minute radio ads designed to heighten public pressure on Mayor Nutter to reverse his decision to eliminate five engine and two ladder companies.

The cuts, projected to save $10 million a year, took effect last month as part of an overall plan to address the city's projected deficit of $2 billion by 2013.

Lawsuits to halt the fire-service cuts have been unsuccessful. Now, the union is taking its campaign to the air with an initial $7,500 buy for ads to run only on KYW-AM (1060). It also will spend an unspecified sum on area billboards.

Dave Kearney, secretary of Local 22 of the International Association of Firefighters, said the billboards cost $1,800 to $15,000 apiece per month, depending on location. The union has yet to decide where or how many to buy. Kearney said the union hoped to have billboards up within two weeks.

"We have been losing on technicalities in the court of law," he said. "We are trying to play right now in the court of public opinion."

Union president Brian McBride would not specify how much the union would spend on the billboards, but said: "As a matter of life and death . . . no expense is too high. We want the public to realize that these cuts put their lives in jeopardy."

An internal study by the Nutter administration says that the areas covered by the eliminated companies can safely be covered by adjacent companies. The union disputes that conclusion.

The design for one billboard, made public yesterday by the union's Virginia-based public relations firm, shows a photograph of Nutter and a quote from a 2006 letter he sent to a constituent in his councilmanic district. Nutter was a councilman at the time and the Street administration had proposed cutting Engine 39 in the Roxborough section of Nutter's district.

"Reducing fire fighting services is very misguided," reads the quote, followed by the union's pointed question: Guess Who's Misguided Now?

Engine 39 was eliminated as part of Nutter's recent cuts.

The radio ad - a scripted melodrama choreographed to sound like a real emergency call - is edgy, too.

A woman, in a panicky voice, asks a male dispatcher to send help to her burning house, only to learn that the nearest ladder company was eliminated and that she will have to wait for the next-closest company.

"Please hurry, it's spreading," she cries. "The smoke. I can't breathe!"

Then a narrator's voice says: "We're the members of Philadelphia Firefighters Union Local 22 and we paid for this message so you'd join us in telling Mayor Nutter, 'Stop playing with fire. Stop the cuts to fire services.' "

Kearney acknowledged that some listeners might find the ad incendiary because it was a dramatization masquerading as the real thing. He quickly said, however: "It is meant to be dramatic because we feel sooner or later a phone call like that is going to happen."

The spot is preceded by a disclaimer that states: "This is a paid commercial message."

Doug Oliver, a spokesman for Nutter, called the union's campaign "purposefully misleading" and a "scare tactic."

The ad's implication "that the Fire Department won't be there when you need them is just not true," he said. "They will consistently respond within nationally recognized guidelines."

As for comments then-Councilman Nutter may have made in 2006, Oliver said: "It was a different time and a different context. No one could have anticipated the financial pressure that city is facing right now."

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