Friday, December 31, 2010

Queens Baby Left Braindead Because EMS Workers Couldn't Get Through Unplowed Streets

Three full days after the blizzard hit New York City a baby falls ill. But thanks to the crack job done by sanitation department EMS workers could not get to the child in time and now he's laying braindead in a hospital.

Congratulations, Mike Bloomberg and the sanitation union. Heckuva job. Also critically wounded: Any future political office aspired to by Bloomberg.
A 3-month-old Queens boy was left brain dead last night after snow-clogged routes prevented medics from reaching him quickly -- and unplowed streets later forced the EMS workers to ditch their ambulance and sprint with the ailing baby to the hospital.

As little Addison Reynoso hovered at death's door, a priest performed last rites, and his family considered pulling him off life support.

The baby's heartbroken father fumed at the city's lax clean-up response to last weekend's monster blizzard.

"Clean the streets," Luis Reynoso said, "because that's why the ambulance came too late."

On top of the half-hour it took rescuers to get Addison to the emergency room, family members and friends said they were forced to call 911 several times before they could even reach a dispatcher.

"The weather hampered our efforts," an FDNY source said, hours after Addison -- apparently suffering from a respiratory infection -- was declared brain dead. "The snow did impact this."

Addison was being watched by a family friend in Corona Wednesday afternoon when he suddenly lost consciousness.

The frantic baby-sitter knocked on a neighbor's door after failing to reach a 911 dispatcher at around 1 p.m. and told the neighbors to call for help. A few minutes later, the boy's parents arrived, and his father lay the child on the floor and started performing CPR.

Addison's mom, Rocio Xoyatla, meanwhile, made several 911 calls, but only got a tone. She finally reached a dispatcher at 1:12 p.m., a family friend said.

It took at least 12 agonizing minutes longer for EMS crews to reach the home on 39th Avenue, near 108th Street in Corona.

When they arrived, medics found Luis Reynoso hovering over his dying child, desperately trying to blow life into the tiny lungs of the baby.

Reynoso and his wife sprinted down three flights of stairs with their child and climbed into the ambulance, which slogged two miles through the snowy streets with a police escort.

Then, the unthinkable happened. The ambulance got stuck in the snow on an unplowed stretch at Baxter and Layton streets, just 30 yards short of the emergency room door at Elmhurst Hospital.

EMS workers had to sprint the rest of the way cradling the baby, arriving at 1:42 p.m.

"The main street outside of the emergency room wasn't cleaned yet," Luis Reynoso said. "We had to get out of the ambulance and run."
Three days after the snow the entrance outside the emergency room wasn't plowed? This is criminal. Gee, it almost sounds coordinated.
There was a method to their madness.

The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear, The Post has learned.

Their motives emerged yesterday as the city's Department of Investigation admitted it began a probe earlier this week after hearing rumblings of a coordinated job action.

Sources told The Post several neighborhoods were on the workers' hit list -- including Borough Park and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn and Middle Village in Queens -- because residents there have more money and their politicians carry big sticks.

"It was more targeted than people actually think," said a labor source. "Borough Park was specifically targeted [because of] . . . its ability to sort of gin up the p.r. machine."

The plan worked. Residents of those neighborhoods -- who, after three days, were still trying to dig out their cars -- are apoplectic.

"It's hurting people for greed," seethed Barry Coogan, 60, who lives on 64th Road in Middle Village. "Whoever made those decisions should lose their jobs.

"Don't hurt the neighborhood so you can't get medical help."

In Brooklyn, Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind called the clean-up "an absolute disaster."

"You have the most unbelievable anger I've ever seen," he said of his Borough Park constituents.

The revelation came as:

* A Queens baby was brain dead last night after poorly plowed roads hampered efforts to rescue him.

* Sources said Sanitation bosses issued verbal directives during the clean-up to give priority to streets near the homes of agency heads and other city bigwigs. "This happens all the time," one Sanit worker said. "They make sure the bosses and politicians get taken care of."

* Despite Mayor Bloomberg's insistence that all roads would be plowed at least once by yesterday morning, many were untouched, with snow still piled high. "We still have work to do," Bloomberg later said.

* Even as streets in the outer boroughs waited for a single plow to arrive, crews were clearing bicycle lanes on the Upper West Side. Bloomberg, however, insisted that was not happening.
Of course Bloomberg's going to dispute that, but I suspect he's full of it and is in CYA mode. If he had any balls he'd de-certify the union today and the state would beging a criminal probe of this mess. That or he should resign in disgrace.

In the end nothing will happen, though. You have a city run by liberals, a state run by a Democrat governor (and a new one being sworn in tonight) and two Democratic senators who've been noticeably absent this week (where's Chuckie?). If Andrew Cuomo wants to start on solid footing, he immediately appoints an independent prosecutor to investigate this mess.

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