Mayor Eric Adams is at odds with his own fire department over the FDNY’s push to issue vacate orders for more than half a dozen Big Apple migrant shelters — including a controversial former Staten Island school, sources told The Post Friday.
FDNY sources said the Adams administration has been trying to slow-walk the FDNY’s doling out of the violations as the city scrambles to find beds for the scores of asylum seekers that’ll be booted from those sites.
The apparent rift has been brewing ever since FDNY inspectors started ramping up their inspections of migrant shelters amid fears the sites could become fiery death traps for the asylum seekers, the sources added.
It recently came to a head after FDNY officials determined vacate orders were necessary for at least seven migrant shelters scattered across the five boroughs.
Top of the list is the controversial St. John’s Villa Academy — a former Staten Island Catholic school that has been the center of legal battles and protests as local residents and lawmakers sought to have the new migrant shelter shut down.
FDNY inspectors are set to issue the vacate order for the former Staten Island school this Sunday, sources said — a move local pols argued should have already happened if it weren’t for the city’s apparent push to delay.
“Over the past month and a half, the fire department and OEM (Office of Emergency Management) and City Hall have been fighting over the timeline of how and when and whether they could or should issue vacate orders to remove some of these locations from the list of migrant shelters,” City Council minority leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said.
Borelli said the FDNY had inspected more than 200 migrant shelters, or planned asylum seeker sites, for possible fire violations back in August.
Of those sites, Borelli said 18 of them — including St. John’s Villa Academy — were found to be unsuitable and should have been issued vacate orders at the time.
“Our demand today is very simple. We want the FDNY to come out and issue the vacate order on this site for whatever the reason was that they thought there was a problem in the past,” Borelli said at a news conference outside the former school.
“[Mayor] listen to the fire department’s advice. We have zealous fire inspectors who go out there every day and they bang out private owners for people who make mistakes and that’s fine. When it happens to the city property, the same zealotry should apply.”
Borough President Vito Fossella added it was about “holding the city’s feet to the fire.”
“If it was your house and you had violations, you would have to cure them, you would have to pay them,” Fossella said.
“It seems like some folks are looking in the other direction to help those who come from another country two weeks ago, two days ago, two minutes ago.”
Roughly 100 migrants have been moved into St. John Villa in recent weeks — despite Staten Island judge, Justice Wayne Ozzi, issuing a preliminary injunction last month that blocked the city from filling up the site with asylum seekers.
The Adams administration has continued to bus migrants there after being granted a stay while the litigation is on appeal.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many migrants would be affected by the impending FDNY orders, or if the city already has a plan for where to relocate them.
After issuing a final inspection at St. John Villa, fire officials are then slated to hit migrant shelters at the former Richard H. Hungerford School in Staten Island, as well as sites in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, sources said.
City Hall and the FDNY didn’t immediately respond to The Post.