An 18-year-old intern, who collapsed in the blistering heat on Tuesday, lay on the sidewalk for more than 30 minutes and didn’t get an ambulance until an outraged Council Speaker Christine Quinn started making phone calls.
Even after Quinn’s calls to Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, a Hatzolah ambulance still arrived at the Brooklyn scene before EMS.
Yvette Toro, who began working as an intern for Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn) just this week, dropped to the ground in front of reporters and television cameras just as a Quinn press conference in Greenpoint was set to begin.
Quinn ran over to Toro, crouched to a knee and began rubbing the young woman’s arms. And NYPD Detective John Madden, a member of Quinn’s security detail and a trained EMT — provided first aid.
“It’s going to be okay,” Quinn told the intern, adding that help would be there “in a minute.”
The teen collapsed at 11:49 a.m. Two 911 calls came in at 11:51 a.m. Records obtained by the Daily News show the first of three EMS ambulances didn’t arrive until 12:23 p.m.
“I told them she had fainted, but was awake and we needed an ambulance there as soon as possible,” said Antonio Reynoso, who made one of the first calls to 911. “I called again a few minutes later to ask where was the ambulance, and they said it was on the way.”
A few minutes turned into 10, 20 and finally 34.
“It’s pretty ridiculous how long it took for them to get there,” said Reynoso, who is eyeing Reyna’s seat in the City Council when she leaves office next year.
Emergency communications logs show EMS classified the call as a low “level five” priority, after it was logged into the system twice — once as a sick woman and once as an injured woman. Fire officials and sources said there was an extremely high volume of emergency calls in the area — many of them heat-related — and there wasn’t an ambulance immediately available.
“No one should have to wait that long for an ambulance, even if it’s a low priority call,” a veteran 911 supervisor told The News.
Quinn, who was outraged at the delay, called Cassano at 12:12 p.m. She left a message. Two minutes later, records show Cassano called the FDNY operations command center and ordered the job upgraded to a priority “level 2.”
Toro was still on the ground, as the mercury hovered in the mid-90s. Quinn, who was quickly losing patience, then called Kelly five minutes after she wasn’t able to reach Cassano. A member of Quinn’s staff called the volunteer Hatzolah ambulance service at 12:17.
Hatzolah arrived within three minutes and took Toro to Woodhull Hospital where she was treated for heat exhaustion and released. Toro, who recently graduated from high school, is expected to enroll in LaGuardia Community College in the fall.
“If Speaker Quinn had not been at that site, that young lady would have waited an hour or two for an ambulance,” said Israel Miranda, president of the union of paramedics and emergency medical technicians. “We’ve been saying the city needs more paramedics and ambulances to serve the public.”
Even after Cassano intervened, it still took nine minutes for EMS to arrive at the scene at Manhattan and Metropolitan Aves. Still, the FDNY issued a statement Tuesday defending its response.
“Every call for medical assistance is important and ambulance dispatching is prioritized so life-threatening calls — for a choking child, cardiac arrest or chest pains — take precedence over non-life-threatening injuries,” the FDNY the statement read. “That was the case here.”
Officials said the uptick in calls on Tuesday was consistent with the day before, when the FDNY logged 3,994 calls for emergencies — almost 20% more than the usual 3,200 calls during the day.
Officials said there were no available units for a low-priority job as EMS crews were working on about 15 other emergency calls nearby.
The 34-minute wait was not tied to the trouble-plagued 911 call system, officials said. A Daily News investigation last month first revealed problems with the city’s new $88 million computer-aided dispatch system, known as ICAD, after it found glitches and repeated crashes had delayed several responses to life-and-death situations.
“This whole situation is outrageous and I don’t know what happened, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” said Quinn, who had scheduled the news conference to discuss the opening of the controversial E. 91st St. marine transfer station. “It’s inexcusable.”
She later met with Cassano, Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway and the FDNY’s chief of EMS, Abdo Nahmod.
“With that meeting, I believe I made it abundantly clear that the Fire Department’s response today was nowhere near satisfactory and was completely unacceptable,” Quinn said.
“Based on what I was just briefed on, it is also crystal clear to me that we were not prepared for today’s heat wave. We should have had more ambulances and more EMTs assigned to work today.”
But another mayoral candidate blasted Quinn for her ballyhooing.
“She’s currently shaking her fists at a City Hall press conference, saying that we were not prepared for today’s heat wave,” said Democratic hopeful Sal Albanese. “Well, whose responsibility is that, Madame Speaker? Has the City Council done anything to ensure that agencies are prepared for a summer of heat waves? Or were you shocked to find out that it gets hot in July?”
With Nathan Place
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