EAST HARLEM, Manhattan (PIX11) — A heat index of nearly 100 degrees is what New York City had on Tuesday — the second hottest May 19 on record. There was also an air quality health advisory.
With those kinds of potentially hazardous conditions present, the city said it was taking measures to ensure that it kept as many people as possible from heatstroke and other dangers. Still, a simple aid to prevent people — especially children — from overheating is lacking in a way that many families say poses a significant risk.
That problem was evident at the Thomas Jefferson Park playground.
There, two moms, Savannah Manzano and Migdalia Tirado, were with their kids and kept moving between the jungle gym and a drinking fountain just outside of the playground area.
They kept filling up a water jug and some bottles with water, then carting them over to the jungle gym slide, which they transformed into a makeshift waterslide.
The families were having fun, but at the same time, the two mothers pointed out something else.
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“It’s pretty aggravating,” said Tirado. She was frustrated that she and her friend had to invent their own cooling aid because the splashpad sprinklers in the park weren’t working.
She said that she and Manzano had to get creative after some other parents showed their own frustration.
“Some of them was actually angry that no water was on,” Tirado said, “and the parents, some of them actually left.”
Manzano said that they’d tried to get the splashpad activated.
“I even had to make a call to 311, you know, and [was] like, ‘Hey, can you guys turn on the sprinklers, it’s excessively hot. There’s a lot of kids here,’ and they said they can definitely put in a report, but it’s up to the workers here.”
She said that they also approached park workers and asked them to activate the water facilities, but it didn’t happen.
That was in spite of Mayor Zohran Mamdani saying on Tuesday that he’s implemented a heat emergency plan for the city.
What that means, he said, was “Helping our neighbors stay safe in this extreme heat.”
Turning on sprinklers in parks accomplishes that, the two mothers said, adding that they’d gone to Jefferson Park’s splashpad after leaving another park, five blocks away, whose sprinklers weren’t working either.
For his part, Mayor Mamdani said that “helping neighbors stay safe in the extreme heat” means that “We’re going to have city workers out across the five boroughs, and they’re going to be welcoming people into cooling centers.”
That activity was definitely happening on Tuesday.
The city funds programs like the Manhattan Outreach Consortium. It’s a group of outreach organizations that send workers out onto the streets of the city to serve people in need directly, especially people who are unhoused and emotionally disturbed.
On Tuesday, consortium workers, including people like James Martin, the assistant director of the CUCS, were with two co-workers driving around Harlem and East Harlem, talking with some of the most vulnerable residents, and providing basic resources for them in the high heat.
“We check those spots with water, and sunscreen,” Martin said, adding that their efforts to help residents beat the heat were also consistent with his organization’s core mission.
“We’re trying to connect people to housing at the same time,” he said.
Regarding park sprinklers and other water-cooling apparatus not working in city parks, a New York City Parks Department spokesperson told PIX11 News that 84 percent of its fountains, sprinklers, and splashpads were turned on and operating.
The 90-plus degree temperatures are expected to persist through Wednesday.
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