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Mostly Cloudy Anger over proposed Inwood garage closing
Safety and response time are residents chief concerns
Nassau County announced last month that, in an effort to save money, it may close the Department of Public Works garage in Inwood and relocate its 14 trucks and 17 employees to the department’s facility in Bay Park, leaving firefighters at the Inwood Fire Department and residents concerned that if an emergency were to occur, it will take longer for the garage’s trucks to reach them.
Peter Sobol, an Inwood resident, said that the garage maintains all county roads from Inwood to Elmont and east to Lido Beach. Sobol also said that the facility has a quick-response team that responds to oil spills, tree removal and flooding emergencies.
The garage’s trucks are used for street sweeping, leaf and snow removal, tree trimming in business districts such as Broadway in Hewlett, landscaping of county parks and facilities, cleaning and clearing storm drains on roadways, and maintaining properties that house watersheds and sewage pumping stations throughout the Five Towns.
“You can get a weather forecast and send out trucks ahead of time if the weather’s going to be bad,” Sobol said, “but you can’t predict an emergency like an oil spill, hurricane or plane crash.”
At a Feb. 17 hearing in Mineola, the Nassau County Planning Commission recommended that the garage property be sold and dedicated to senior citizen housing.
“These are our guys. They live and work here and we need them here,” Sobol said. “We shouldn’t sell the property because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
Former Inwood Fire Chief Frank Parise said that Inwood has a heavy traffic flow of tankers on the county roads and is prone to incidents like the gas leak on Sheridan Boulevard that occurred while he was fire chief three years ago. “When there’s an emergency on a county road, we call the county and they send out trucks from the garage,” Parise said. “Fortunately, the garage was right around the corner,” he added of the gas leak, “and they brought sand and helped us clog the storm drains. They were there right away and were a tremendous service for firefighters.”
