SWEATING IT OUT: Christine Quinn (rear) called Commissioner Ray Kelly for help yesterday while she, a cop in her detail and Councilwoman Diana Reyna tended to an intern who fainted in the heat. (Gotham Gazette)
Christine Quinn (William Farrington)
Ray Kelly (Kristy Leibowitz)
SWEATING IT OUT: Christine Quinn (rear) called Commissioner Ray Kelly (inset) for help yesterday while she, a cop in her detail and Councilwoman Diana Reyna tended to an intern who fainted in the heat. (
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Who ya gonna call when you’re a mayor wannabe in trouble? Commissioner Ray Kelly, of course.
The 911 system was so overloaded during yesterday’s oppressive heat that the FDNY ran out of ambulances, forcing Council Speaker Christine Quinn — who has sparred with Kelly over her bid to install an inspector general to oversee the NYPD — called the commish when an intern passed out in Brooklyn.
Yvette Toro, 18, who works for Councilwoman Diana Reyna, collapsed at 11:50 a.m. during a Williamsburg press conference about a waste-transfer station as temperatures hit the mid-90s under a blazing sun.
Quinn’s staff immediately called 911, and the job was relayed to the FDNY’s EMS in less than a minute with no glitches, a source said.
“No problems, clean call,” an FDNY source said.
But the caller described Toro as awake and breathing, according to a transcript, making her condition non-life-threatening and a “segment 5” on the EMS’s 1-to-8 scale. The lower numbers are highest priority.
“We don’t send paramedic units to incidents described as someone who fainted,” the source said. Also, there were 15 other incidents in that area of northern Brooklyn at the time competing for attention.
Citywide, the system usually gets 3,200 calls, but because of the heat, it was on pace for 4,000.
Quinn said her staff made several calls, including one to the Mayor’s Office at noon, but there was still no sign of an ambulance. “My staff was calling everyone,” she said.
At 12:13 p.m., another call to 911 said the stricken teen was unconscious. “So it got upgraded. That’s a segment 3 or 2,” said an FDNY. A fire engine and an ambulance were dispatched.
Quinn, meanwhile, called Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano but got his voicemail.
She then broke out the big guns and called top cop Kelly at 12:15 p.m., saying: “I said I need an ambulance. He said ‘Where are you?’ ”
Almost simultaneously, her staff called the Hatzolah volunteer ambulance service, Quinn said.
At 12:21 p.m. — 31 minutes after the first call — the cavalry arrived, including two cops on foot, a firetruck and the Hatzolah ambulance.
By the time an FDNY ambulance arrived, Hatzolah had already taken Toro to Woodhull Medical Center, where she was released after a few hours.
Toro was with Quinn and Reyna outside PS 132, which the mayoral hopeful said is subjected to constant garbage-truck traffic that would be alleviated by a waste-transfer facility on the Upper East Side that she supports.
Quinn said she was outraged by the “inexcusable” and “outrageous” delay.
“I don’t know what in God’s name could have taken so long to get an ambulance to help this young woman,” she fumed.
She said while she and Reyna tended to Toro on the ground, she repeated, “They’ll be here in a minute. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“Because I can’t really say, ‘They’ll be here in half an hour,’ because that is going to panic her.”
The FDNY said it did nothing wrong considering the information it had gotten.
“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 — when the patient is breathing, alert or communication,” it said in a statement. “That was the case here.
“In addition, the patient was being treated by a police officer, who is an EMT, so care was being administered from the moment the incident occurred.”
That officer was the head of Quinn’s NYPD security detail, who was trained as an emergency medical technician and who gave Toro oxygen and found ice to cool her down.