By Mitchell Freedman
Newsday
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — The Riverhead Fire Department has gone dry.
The department’s commissioners banned alcohol from their firehouses following what police say was a drunken driving accident last month in which a Fire Department captain crashed a fire truck into a utility pole after taking part in a parade in Greenport.
The volunteer firefighter, Robert Block, 43, was later charged with driving while intoxicated and endangering the welfare of a child because his 8-year-old son was on the truck. The boy was unharmed.
The charges against him are pending.
Last week, Riverhead’s commissioners suspended a half-dozen volunteers, including first assistant chief George Woodson, for minor infractions connected with the Greenport parade appearance, but not for the accident involving the truck.
Woodson, who is next in line to become chief, was suspended for 30 days and will be back on duty after April 7. The truck’s crew also was suspended.
Woodson initially did not dispute the accusations that led to his suspension — failing to request a police report after a minor accident when a fire truck from another department scratched a Riverhead truck, and failing to respond immediately when he was told that night that a Riverhead fire truck had been seen parked on the side of the road in Aquebogue.
But after reading about his suspension on the front page of his local paper Friday, he said he will demand an apology for the suspension from the fire commissioners.
Commissioners did not return calls for comment.
“This is my name. It’s my reputation,” he said Friday.
Woodson said he initially agreed to the suspension because he thought that, while it was undeserved, fighting it would simply create more trouble in the department. Woodson said Friday that one of the charges against him — failure to have police investigate the accident — was groundless, because an off-duty Southold Town police officer was on hand to check out the minor accident. “I have a CC [case report] number,” he said.
Regarding the complaint of a fire truck on the side of the road, Woodson said while he did receive a call, he was not the fire department’s officer on duty because he was working at a part-time job. And, he added, the truck was not said to be abandoned, only late in returning from the parade.