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A whiff of hot air when it comes to city cooling centers?
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A whiff of hot air when it comes to city cooling centers?
Yesterday, Mayor Nutter held a press conference to discuss, among other things, the potentially deadly heat expected this weekend. The Daily News reports that there have been four heat-related deaths so far, and with 100-degree heat expected tomorrow, there unfortunately be more.
The mayor and city administration are urging residents to stay cool, check on elderly neighbors and relatives, and make use of city services – including city “cooling centers,” where residents can get out of the heat and enjoy some taxpayer-funded AC.
Thing is, the cooling center plan is less of a coordinated emergency plan than you might think.
In the sweltering heat of last Sunday, this reporter noticed (as reported in this week's print edition of City Paper) a tweet from the city reminding residents to stay out of the heat and offering a link to a list of “cooling centers.”
But there wasn't exactly a list -- instead, there was an interactive map which (after performing not the easiest installation of additional flash software in order to be able to view it) showed cooling centers around the city.
It turns out many, if not most, are branches of the Free Library – and that makes sense: why not use the existing infrastructure of libraries, already distributed in neighborhoods around the city, to deliver an emergency service?
Only that emergency service doesn't appear to be being delivered on an emergency basis -- that is, the libraries aren't actually open that many extra hours at all.
Last Sunday, for example – despite the fact that the city's Health Commissioner had declared an excessive heat warning, and that the city was tweeting about its cooling centers – none of the city's branch libraries were, in fact, open (three regional libraries were, as well as the Central library, for part of the day). Only one library, Lucien B. Blackwell, had extra hours on Saturday.
And it turns out that the City's Office of Emergency Management, housed in the Managing Director's Office and which oversees the city's response to emergencies like extreme weather, doesn't actually oversee cooling center hours – or even, apparently, keep track of them.
Joan Przybylowicz, of the MDO, said her office didn’t know whether cooling centers had been open last weekend and explained in general terms that cooling centers “may open” during an excessive-heat warning, and the city “may request that the Free Library extend hours,” but that it’s up to the Free Library and its branches to figure that out.
The MDO, she explained, “doesn’t have the ability to manage a list that would change every day. ... We don’t keep track of which libraries or older adult centers extend their hours for every excessive heat warning.”
So it's up to the Free Library, not the Office of Emergency Management, to coordinate an emergency response – and it's on them to pay for it, too: Przbylowicz confirmed that the funds for extra hours come straight out of the budget of the Free Library, not the MDO. The Free Library, of course, has seen its budget dramatically cut under Mayor Nutter and has been operating on reduced hours for years.
Meanwhile, CP checked the Free Library's blog – the only place that has up-to-date info on cooling center hours we could find – to see what was planned for tomorrow's hundred-degree heat.
Right now, the site says one (1) library will be open extra hours on Saturday. Nothing is listed for Sunday – again.
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