Fire officials, hit with a scathing federal report criticizing the department in the deaths of two firefighters in 2014, said they are preparing to sue the manufacturer of a diesel engine now in more than a dozen problem-plagued city fire trucks in order to thwart future disasters.Fire Commissioner Joseph E.
Finn said he is working with the city’s lawyer to file a lawsuit against Navistar International, the company that created the MaxxForce engines inside some of the department’s vehicles.
“There’s 47 lawsuits across the country attributed to this engine and a number of class-action lawsuits and we’re going to be joining that,” Finn said
last night.
“They make up about 35 percent of our fleet and they’re taking up about 80 percent of our service and maintenance time,” he said.
“We are going to be filing our own single-action lawsuit and we’re working with the city’s attorney on how we can best approach that.”
Finn’s comments came on the heels of a 77-page National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report that found inadequate wind-driven fire training, subpar staffing and poor tactical decisions contributed to Walsh and Kennedy’s deaths.