Harlem residents accuse NYC of shirking life-saving inspections amid deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak: ‘Irresponsible'

Yahoo

6 hours ago

The deadly Legionnaires' outbreak gripping Harlem has city officials in hot water — as locals accused them Friday of dropping the ball on life-saving inspections and needlessly slow-walking revealing exactly where the disease hit.
Many outraged Harlem residents told The Post they only learned that they lived or worked in one of 10 buildings with cooling towers that tested positive for the insidious Legionnaires'-causing bacterium after the list was unveiled Thursday — weeks into the outbreak that has killed four people.
'Why weren't these cooling towers properly maintained? Who dropped the ball and why?' raged Nichole Ingram, who fell ill with Legionnaires' disease around July 24 after she attended a funeral service in 2239 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, one of the affected buildings.
Ingram, 53, said her son Raymond, an asthmatic 35-year-old, was still hospitalized with the flu-like, respiratory illness in New York-Presbyterian Hospital after a stay in Harlem Hospital — one of several city-owned buildings with affected cooling towers.
'Why buildings in Harlem and not in lower Manhattan? People are losing their lives unnecessarily,' she said.
The outbreak comes amid a drop in cooling tower inspections.
Only roughly 1,200 cooling towers were inspected for Legionnaires' bacteria during the first six months of this year, compared to nearly 5,100 at the same point in 2017, data provided by the city Department of Health shows.
Building owners by law are required to test for the disease-causing bacteria Legionella every 90 days to avoid outbreaks.
Four New Yorkers have died in the current outbreak and 17 remain hospitalized out of 99 confirmed cases, DOH officials said Thursday.
Officials that day also finally released — after weeks of only providing five ZIP codes — the addresses of the buildings with the 12 total cooling towers that tested positive for Legionella.
All but one of the 10 buildings were either behind on the mandated testing or had cooling towers that weren't checked at all this year, according to Gothamist.
In addition to Harlem Hospital, the city-owned buildings with affected cooling towers were Central Harlem Sexual Health Clinic, the NYC Economic Development Corporation and CUNY's Marshak Science Building, the DOH said.
Health Commissioner Michelle Morse argued the city withheld the building addresses to help keep all New Yorkers vigilant, regardless of where they live.
'We did not want people to think, well, I don't live there, I don't have to worry,' she said.
But New Yorkers who live and work in the buildings were horrified after the last-minute revelation — with some only hearing it from The Post on Friday.
'You're going to a hospital for a care and there's a possibility you're getting sick because of the lack of inspections?' asked Mariela L. 57, who was visiting a family member at Harlem Hospital.
'That's irresponsible on the city's part. To my knowledge, they did not inform the patients before the news broke. My family member found out from me and I found out from the news.'
A manager at GNC Live Well in 215 West 125th Street, an affected building also with medical offices and a bank, said he didn't know until Friday.
'Nobody from the building told us anything,' he said. 'We're the last to find out. We find out when the damage is done, the ship is sinking.'
Legionnaires' bacteria is found in freshwater and can grow in water systems such as those used for air conditioning large buildings, especially during warmer weather.
Mist released by the cooling towers can send the bacteria into the air, and if inhaled, it can cause Legionnaires' disease, a severe form of pneumonia.
The last wave of Legionnaires' this rampant hit the Big Apple a decade ago — and prompted the cooling tower inspection law.
In summer 2015, toxic cooling towers at the Opera House Hotel infected more than 100 and killed 12 in the South Bronx, following a smaller outbreak in Co-op City earlier that year.
But despite the legislation requiring regular testing, another widespread outbreak hit Washington Heights in upper Manhattan in 2018, killing one person and sickening 60 others.
Councilwoman Julie Menin (D-Manhattan), who sits on the body's health committee, promised a 'hard-hitting hearing' in September over the health department's failures in the most recent outbreak.
'I think it's unconscionable that we have a department of health with a staffing vacancy rate hovering around 9%,' she said.
'And that the city wouldn't even initially disclose the locations of the cooling towers that tested positive even though multiple locations — four of them in fact — were city owned buildings. We clearly needed faster and more transparent government response to legionnaires that keeps New York are safe.'
State Sen. Cordell Cleare (D-Manhattan) questioned why the outbreak was concentrated in Harlem.
'Surely, the Legionella bacteria do not have a special affiliation with our neighborhood?' she said.
'We question why it only seems to be in this area. We do not want to be the canaries in the coal mine.'
Ingram's lawyer, Jory Lange, is representing 31 patients in the latest Legionnaires' outbreak and will likely be filing a lawsuit when the actual source of the outbreak is identified.
Lange said simple maintenance, akin to using chlorine to clean a pool, is all that's needed to keep Legionnaires' at bay.
'A Legionnaires' outbreak should not be happening in 2025. We're seeing this every summer in New York,' he said.
'People are breaking the law.'
— Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts, Matthew Fischetti, Vaughn Golden and Craig McCarthy