The St. Vincent's Effect On Hurricane Sandy Hospital Evacuations

Who is politically accountable for the failure of the emergency management plan in response to Hurricane Sandy that lead to infrastructure failure at New York City hospitals ?

Following the infrastructure failure of critical hospitals in New York City because of flooding and storm surge associated with Hurricane Sandy and related power failures, some healthcare activists began to demand answers for the failure of New York City's emergency management planning. The fault does not lie with the doctors and medical staff at the impacted hospitals ; rather, the politicians in charge of the city's emergency management plan must account for this irresponsible and dangerous situation. How could it be that New York City's resources would prioritise reopening business when critical hospitals could be left in the dark ? One activist has posted a new YouTube video requesting political accountability for the dangerous risks posed to public health by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's lack of real emergency planning.

Video Link : http://youtu.be/ggjOOjbTKZs

Background

In the community effort to demand a replacement hospital for St. Vincent's, politicians imposed on the community the burden of participating in a needs assessment to determine if a full-service hospital was required in the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

"The hospital evacuations following the destruction by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital," said Louis Flores, an activist who produced this YouTube video. "New York City needs a Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in the Lower West Side for disaster recovery efforts. And New York City needs real resources to improve the infrastructure of all of our hospitals, including Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island and SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn."

Hurricane Irene

In 2011, St. Vincent's activists organized a mass civilian trauma event exercise to demonstrate what grassroots community activists described was a major risk to public health : where would sick and injured patients receive emergency and trauma care in the event of a major national disaster under conditions that had created an irresponsible geographic distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan.

See related link : http://thevillager.com/villager_443/traumadrama.html

Hurricane Sandy

In the time leading up to and following the landfall of the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the infrastructure of full-service hospitals on the East Side of Manhattan has failed. Hospital patients were forced to be evacuated from NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals.

To Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Speaker Christine Quinn, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, to City Planner Amanda Burden, Brad Hoylman, Bill Rudin, and to the Partnership for New York, where are New Yorkers supposed to go now, in case of a medical emergency ?

Brad Hoylman Illegal Campaign Signs

The New York Post hounds Bill Thompson over suspiciously large fines being imposed by the Bloomberg administration in what has all the appearances of a politically-motivated effort to suck the funding out of any competitors that are challenging City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for the Democratic Party primary in the 2013 mayoral election. Meanwhile, here is evidence that political allies of Speaker Quinn break the law, too. But do the Bloomberg-Quinn administration likewise fine Brad Hoylman out the ass to the tune of $600,000, too ?

Save St. Vincent's Petition

Health Petition : Mayor Michael Bloomberg : Stop the Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan

Sign Our Petition ! The Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan will set a dangerous public health precedent. City politicians would be saying that a top 1% real estate developer can make hundreds of millions of dollars in private profit by converting the charitable public real estate buildings of the former St. Vincent's Hospital, whilst the 99% have no replacement Level One Trauma Center or Full-Service Hospital. If Rudin's Condo Plan is approved, Mayor Bloomberg would be saying that it is O.K. for an entire section of New York City to have no full-service hospital. How can this be a responsible public health care policy ? Mayor Bloomberg needs to stop the Rudin Condo Plan for St. Vincent's Hospital until a full-service hospital is created.

John Gilbert Rudin Phone Zap

Please join the masses and flood Rudin Management Company's phone and email this week so they are aware of the growing wave of public disgust with them stealing a hospital from the community !

CALL RIGHT NOW: John Gilbert, Rudin Management Group COO - 212-407-2400;

AND EMAIL: jgilbert@rudin.com

Rudin will LIE TO YOU and tell you the Urgent Care Center they plan on putting in one of the St. Vincent Hospital's buildings will replace what St. Vincent's provided. They will LIE TO YOU and tell you no hospital system will step up and reopen the campus to be a full service hospital.

North Shore-LIJ Bond Rating Outlook

Will Plans To Install An Unwanted Urgent Care Center In The O'Toole Building In The West Village Impact North-Shore LIJ's Bond Rating ?

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is making a multi-million dollar investment in an urgent care center that is proposed in the catchment area that used to be served by St. Vincent's Hospital.

The urgent care center is a risky and experimental investment by North Shore-LIJ, because this is the first time that the New York State Department of Health has approved an urban urgent care center to replace a Trauma Level 1, full service hospital in New York City.

Since the closing of St. Vincent's, community activists have organised and demanded that politicians help the community first save, then replace, St. Vincent's. A companion real estate development project that will turn the primary campus of St. Vincent's into luxury condos by Rudin Management Company also faces unified community opposition.

It is not yet known how much revenue North Shore-LIJ is projecting from its proposed urgent care center, which will face calls for a community boycott, and what such a boycott will mean to North Shore-LIJ's return on its investment and on its larger finances.

#OccupyWallStreet Marches to St. Vincent's

The activist group called Hands Off St. Vincent's endorses the #OccupyWallStreet march to St. Vincent's Hospital.

Could it be possible to march past Brad Hoylman's coöperative apartment building at 30 Fifth Avenue ?

Mock Swine Flu Death

Last night, residents from the Lower West Side held a "mass civilian trauma exercise," where participants recreated a "field hospital" on the sidewalks outside where St. Vincent's Hospital used to operate.

The "mass civilian trauma exercise" was organised by activists, who oppose Community Board 2's lockstep effort to approve a controversial plan to rezone St. Vincent's into luxury condominiums. Bill Rudin, the head of the Rudin real estate empire, stands to sell luxury condos worth over $1 billion, if CB2 approves his rezoning application.