Community Board 12 Meets with NYPD, FDNY, and DSNY to Provide a Safe Yom Tov

By Yehudit Garmaise

Community Board 12 met Friday, at the board’s 13th Avenue office, with those who lead and provide safe environments for Boro Park residents, as they coordinated plans during the board's annual Pre-Pesach meeting.

City Councilman Kalman Yeger, NYPD officers FDNY brass, Boro Park Shomrim, Chaverim, Misaskim, and Hatzolah volunteers joined to discuss how to create safe and plentiful sreifas chametz locations with protective barriers, to ensure extra garbage pick-ups, and to deploy extra police officers to patrol the area over Yom Tov.

The purpose of the meeting was to “look at everything that happened in the weeks before Pesach last year, and see what can be improved,” said Community Board Chairman Yidel Perlstein.

Hatzolah volunteers, unfortunately, pointed out that erev Pesach is a time that they receive a lot of calls from people who have been burned by the fires.

One issue about which parents should be aware is that in years past, many children have looked around the neighborhood for extra cardboard boxes and other materials to burn along with their chametz, to make fires dangerous and much larger “than is necessary for religious purposes,” as one member of Shomrim put it.

While burning chametz is always exciting, community members should remember that fires can easily endanger both adults and children.

Last year, for instance, one Shomrim volunteer and child were injured at the fire at 45 Street and 14th Avenue, and everyone is doing everything possible to keep everyone safe both before Yom Tov comes in and continues for eight days.

For further fire safety, one community board member pointed out that sanitation dumpsters were too close to the fires last year, and he asked that they be moved two blocks away, which sanitation representatives said they would do.

To ensure that every fire in Boro Park has been extinguished, the FDNY will be going block to block to ensure that every fire: large and small, is extinguished by 11:37am on Erev Pesach, Friday, April 15, said Ladder 148 Captain Michael Doda.

Sanitation workers asked that residents put out all of their garbage and recycling by Thursday night, April 15, to ensure that everything gets picked up before Yom Tov.

While the NYPD deployed six mobile cars to patrol Boro Park last year, this year, Commanding Officer Deputy Inspector Jason P. Hagestad, said he will send out 10 police cars: to ensure that everyone has a safe, enjoyable, and fun Yom Tov.

Photos by: Dovid Jaroslawicz