Joe Flood’s The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City—and Determined the Future of Cities is reminiscent of Jonathan Kozal’s 1995 book Amazing Grace, in which he wrote about the incredibly sad and decrepit state of the South Bronx from the perspective of those living in its crushing poverty.

From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, the South Bronx saw an incredible increase in the amount of fires sweeping through its streets. With firefighters hindered by outdated gear, lax buildings codes and inspection and systematic closures of fire houses in many of the fire-prone areas, the NYFD was fighting a losing battle.

Statistics show that arson only accounted for seven-percent of the rapid increase in the amount of fires. However, those numbers seem a bit suspect and perhaps politically-motivated, as residents in some of the hardest hit neighborhoods literally fight to survive in an imploding city that seemed all but forgotten.

With politics usually playing the leading role where cost-cutting is concerned, the only people who truly know the reasons for closing firehouses in predominately African American and Hispanic areas, while the “nicer” areas kept theirs, are the people who did it. To think that personal agendas, political and otherwise, are not in play is simply naïve.

It’s understandable how Chief John O’Hagan and others may have thought the use of RAND’s computer model in conjunction with firefighting would make complete sense. It seemed to work fairly well in military settings. However, as is often the case, what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate to the real world. As Joe Flood definitely proved, sometimes cutting costs is actually more expensive in the long run; and, in the case of RAND and other politically-induced down-sizing, the cost was human lives.

Overall, Joe Flood does an amazing job of wrestling vast amounts of information and history into a cohesive and informative body of work. Taking on such a dark time for the city of New York is no small feat. Flood brings an important lesson to the forefront that not only made a lasting mark in history, but hopefully will stand as an important lesson moving forward into the future.
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Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (April 5, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-1594485060
ASIN: 1594485062