The locations of four are known for certain. None are in Queens, though one is at the very edge of Brooklyn near Ridgewood. Those companies — Engine 271 in Wyckoff Heights, Engine 4 in Manhattan, Engine 161 in Staten Island and Ladder 53 on City Island in the Bronx — are already out of commission overnight and face the axe altogether in July.
   But it’s the other 10, or as many as 12, that have the officials, and the firefighters’ union, concerned. The FDNY says it has to close them in January to meet the Bloomberg administration’s budget demands for fiscal year 2010, which starts July 1, but that it has not yet determined which companies will bite the bullet.
   “There’s been talk of other companies closing down, but none have been identified yet,” FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer said. “The only thing that’s been put out there is the number of potential closings.”
   A number of emergency medical service tours will also be eliminated, according to Dwyer, but where and when has not been decided for those either.

   The Uniformed Firefighters Association put out an ad last week listing 12 communities in Queens that it says could see fire company closures, along with dozens of others throughout the city.
   The ad, which is posted on the union’s website, ufanyc.org, under the heading “Your Firehouse Could Be Closed Next,” does not identify which units may be shut down, though it claims that companies in Flushing, Jamaica, St. Albans, Whitestone, Woodside, Rockaway, Far Rockaway, Long Island City, Queens Village, Springfield Gardens, Bayside and Howard Beach are all in jeopardy “according to the FDNY’s criteria for closures.”
   Dwyer, however, said he knows of no such criteria, nor how the UFA chose which communities to list, adding “They named just about every neighborhood in the city.” The ad cites an equal 12 sections of every borough.
   The union’s press office did not provide an explanation for how it came up with the list.
   According to Dwyer, the public will not be endangered when the other 10 to 12 fire companies close because others will be able to fill the gap. In most cases, including that of Engine 271, another fire company is located in the same house, he noted. And other fire companies are nearby: seven within a one-mile radius of Engine 271, for example, all of them open 24 hours a day.
   “There’s a need to cut money from the budget,” Dwyer said. “Every city agency is facing that. It just comes down to budget balancing: what can we do to cut this budget and still do our best to keep the people of this city safe?”
   The answer, according to at least two City Council members from Queens, is to not cut the FDNY at all, but to find savings elsewhere or bring in new revenue.
   Councilmen John Liu (D-Flushing) and Tony Avella (D-Bayside) — both candidates for higher office this year — each vowed to fight any closures and criticized the administration for even proposing them.
   “As far as I’m concerned, and many council members, it’s completely unacceptable,” said Avella, a member of the council’s Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee and a candidate for mayor. “Yes, we are in a fiscal crisis, but there are certain services that must be maintained, and fire protection is one that cannot be cut.”
   “The Queens delegation to the council is fighting these closures vigorously,” said Liu, who’s running for city comptroller. “At the end of the day, perhaps we’ll succeed in keeping some of them open.”
   Neither councilman accepts the idea that fire companies can be closed without impacting safety.
   “The administration would have people believe that the closure of these firehouses won’t affect response times,” Liu said. “It’s rather disheartening and disturbing that the administration would try to foist such a counterintuitive and counter-to-reality idea on the public.”
   Avella said Mayor Michael Bloomberg should not propose cutting funding for different city agencies at the same rate considering their disparate missions.
   “The FDNY can’t take the same cuts as Consumer Affairs,” Avella said. He pointed out that Consumer Affairs and the city Department of Transportation both recently published their own special calendars, celebrating an anniversary and promoting traffic safety, respectively — something he believes the city should not bother doing.
   “You can’t have two departments wasting money while we’re closing firehouses and putting people’s lives in danger,” the councilman said.
   Liu said the city should obviate the need for budget cuts by giving fewer tax breaks to developers and not allowing the zoning changes they frequently seek for large projects without getting something in return.
   He declined to cite specific firms that have reaped what he calls “windfall benefits” from the city, but did specify that the largest project underway in his district, Muss Development’s SkyView Parc, is not one of them.