This is the most disgusting story I’ve ever read. I’m horrified that this occurred. Horrified. A newborn baby died in New York City because some city workers wanted to score a political point against the Mayor.
In the greatest, most technologically advanced city in the world a little baby cried out for help. The baby’s mother dialed 911 for nine hours but nobody came. Nobody came because somebody thought their political games were more important.
The New York Post is reporting:
Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.
Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.
“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.
Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department — and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan — at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents.
The snitches “didn’t want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation,” Halloran said. “They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”
So these union thugs wanted to score points so they didn’t do their job. And guess what happened, people died including a newborn baby that waited ten hours for emergency personnel to show up.
The New York Daily News reports:
A blizzard baby delivered inside the lobby of a snowbound Brooklyn building died after an emergency call of a woman in labor brought no help for nine excruciating hours.
The baby’s mother, a 22-year-old college senior, was recovering Tuesday night at Interfaith Medical Center, where her newborn was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. on Monday. That was 10 hours after the first 911 call from the bloody vestibule on Brooklyn Ave. in Crown Heights.
“No one could get to her. Crown Heights was not plowed, and no medical aid came for hours,” said the student’s mother.
I drove up to New York and unfortunately got caught in the blizzard and I couldn’t believe how bad the roads were on that day and the ensuing days. The roads had dangerous ice patches on them for days and I witnessed several awful accidents, one where a car flipped over. So many people I spoke with said they’d never seen anything like this where the city had just not done anything to help. They said they couldn’t imagine why nothing was being done.
And now that I’ve heard I still can’t imagine that callousness of some who would do something like this. I’m serious when I say the people behind this plot should be arrested for reckless endangerment and callous disregard for life among other charges. I’m truly horrified. A baby died so somebody could make a point about how powerful they were.
Part of me wants to make a point about this is what happens when you have an incestuous relationship between government and unions but I don’t have the patience to think that through right now. It comes down to this -these people knew that people would get hurt and possibly die when they did nothing when the snows came. They knew that and they didn’t care. Their raises were more important. Their political power, their muscle, their seat at the table was more important than the life of that newborn baby.
A baby cried out in the most technologically advanced city in the history of man. But nobody came. Because those who were supposed to didn’t care. And a baby died.
December 31, 2010 at 9:00 pm
So, in other words Dutchman, you delivered an irrelevant non sequiter to score cheap points and to detract attention away from the story. Well, at least you scored on one out of two. Now run back to your bridge.
December 31, 2010 at 11:02 pm
I think the union officials who did this resulting in death should be criminally charged with manslaughter.
Actions have consequences. Their actions resulted in the death of others. IMHO (not an attorney), that makes them guilty of the easily foreseeable outcome of their actions. They should not enjoy the immunity afforded to government workers either as this action was contrary to their jobs and they knew it.
There is no excuse for this. None at all. It will happen again too, unless it is addressed right now with the full weight of the law.
December 31, 2010 at 11:46 pm
No one has explained to me why the baby died. It isn't fatal to be born in a building lobby, although why she didn't go back into her own apartment I can't understand either. Unless the baby was premature there is no reason why it should have died. I assume anyone would have enough sense to wrap the baby in something to keep it from getting too cold.
Not that this wasn't a bad thing to do on the part of the union, but this story doesn't make any sense.
January 1, 2011 at 3:13 am
@Eulogos– there could be any number of reasons why even a full-term infant delivered at the end of a healthy, uneventful pregnancy could require some NICU intervention or another following birth. One of my babies, full-term and of a healthy size, had breathing issues upon delivery. If we'd been stuck at home for nine hours afterward, I honestly don't know how he would have fared. I shudder to think on it…
January 2, 2011 at 8:38 am
Nevertheless, if labor is not induced, (which more often than not leads to babies being born before they are ready to be born, even if they are called full term), or augmented with pitocin so that the contractions are more intense than normal contractions, and if the baby is born vaginally (C section babies have a much higher liklihood of respiratory difficulties) and if the mother has not had pain medications, and if the mother has not been prevented from eating and drinking normally, and if the cord isn't cut before it stops pumping, so that the baby has time to adjust to extrauterine life before fully transitioning to breathing on its own, then the chances of breathing difficulties are very small. All of these are MORE likely to obtain in a birth in an apartment building lobby than in a hospital. They do lots of things in hospitals from which they then have to rescue babies.
Of course there are reasons why some babies have problems regardless of where they are born. I just don't like the implication that babies just naturally die if the guys in the ambulance don't show up! I'd like to know the rest of the story. And the birth is way more interesting to me than the strike.
Personally, I used to fantasize floods and blizzards which would give me an excuse not to go to the hospital in labor! Finally I realized I didn't need an excuse, and gave birth to babies four through nine in my own home.
Susan Peterson
January 2, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Yet another reason why public sector unions are a very bad idea.
January 3, 2011 at 12:00 am
Eulogos, the point of the article is not WHY the baby needed emergency help, but that the baby DID need emergency help and couldn't get it. I can think of lots of reasons a full-term baby would need medical help. Even something as "simple" as stooling in utero, something the average person (including me) doesn't know how to handle, can be life threatening.
As to why the person didn't go back to her apartment, the linked article explains:
"The pregnant woman was walking from her home to the nearby hospital in the still-swirling snow when she ducked into the building lobby, unable to make it any farther."
Furthermore, she made a wonderful decision and rejected the idea of killing her baby, which was certainly suggested to her.
"The young woman had not told her family she was pregnant – she didn't want to disappoint relatives – or that she and her college boyfriend had decided to put the child up for adoption."
It's disgusting that the Union supervisors (are alleged to have) ordered a work slowdown and caused the death of this baby, and others.