Kruger Blasts City For Lindsay-Style Blizzard Debacle
State Senator Carl Kruger slammed the city for its “colossal failure” in responding to the weekend’s blizzard, which left most of the area’s main roadways and many of its side streets impassible.
Kruger is demanding that the City Council’s sanitation committee immediately hold emergency hearings to discern the cause of the bungled response, which left the FDNY EMS with a three-hour delay for critical cases like heart attacks, and a 12-hour delay for non-critical cases as emergency vehicles struggled to get through streets.
“At 1 p.m. today there was already a backlog of 1,300 critical calls. How many people are going to die today because our streets haven’t been cleared?” Sen. Kruger asked in a statement yesterday. “When emergency patients have to be transported to the hospital on foot in New York City, you know you’ve got a problem. This is not a MASH unit in the Korean War.”
The state senator likened the city’s response to that of the “Lindsay debacle” in 1969, when Mayor John Linsday’s delayed actions paralyzed the city after a February blizzard. He also blasted the Office of Emergency Management’s “foolish” decision to deny the FDNY’s request to declare a state of emergency.
“This is an outrage,” Sen. Kruger said. “Forecasters predicted this blizzard days in advance. There was clearly insufficient planning, and New Yorkers are paying too steep a price. Someone has to be accountable.”
