The manufacturer that sold the New York City Fire Department $800,000 worth of flawed fire-retardant gloves sent word to its workers and others this week that it was closing its plant, in Arkansas, officials said. The company, the Glove Corporation, hinted in its announcement to its workers that its difficulties were a direct result of the troubled contract with New York.
The closing complicates the city’s efforts to either recoup its money or seek repair of the gloves — called the Blaze Fighter — that have not adequately protected firefighters’ hands from burns.
Fire commanders are hurrying to replace the gloves. Some 6,500 firefighters on the 11,500-member force are now outfitted with the model of glove the company has said is not compliant with national standards for heat resistance. And some firefighters have more than one pair of the gloves, which were sold to the city for $55 a set. Firefighters tested a version as part of a pilot program in 2009, rating them higher than three competitors. But that model was different from the batch of gloves now considered noncompliant with federal safety standards, officials said.
The difference — a change in material inside the gloves’ lining — was discovered by an equipment analyst the department consulted when the first firefighters were injured while wearing the gloves at fires in November. Six firefighters have now suffered second-degree burns on the back of their hands fighting house fires in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/nyregion/05gloves.html?ref=nyregionAmealea Love, 27, who has worked on the company’s production line for a year, said supervisors summoned employees on Tuesday and told them they were “closing the factory and you have no job.”
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