As dangerously low temperatures grip New York City, some people experiencing homelessness are entering the subways to stay warm.<\/p>\n
Volunteers with the Guardian Angels have been patrolling the Coney Island\u2013Stillwell Avenue subway station in search of those in need.<\/p>\n
News 12 followed a crew as they encountered two men seeking warmth and medical help.<\/p>\n
What began as a brief check-in quickly turned into an emergency when volunteers found a man complaining of severe pain throughout his body.<\/p>\n
Guardian Angels patrol leader Jose Gonzalez called 911.<\/p>\n
“He’s saying he has pains all over the body, especially the chest,” Gonzalez told emergency responders.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, another man experiencing homelessness asked the group for help finding a warm place to stay.<\/p>\n
“If it doesn’t tug on your heartstrings, if you don’t get emotional, you’re not human,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
According to the Guardian Angels, the past week has been especially difficult as frigid temperatures have driven more people onto trains.<\/p>\n
“They use the trains to get warm,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
New York City remains under a Code Blue, which relaxes certain rules to make it easier for people to access shelter during extreme cold.<\/p>\n
Despite those measures, three people have died outdoors in Brooklyn in the past week, and 10 people citywide, according to officials.<\/p>\n
Those deaths are why volunteers like the Guardian Angels have been walking subway trains for hours at a time, distributing food and water and calling for help when necessary.<\/p>\n
“It’s good to give a sandwich and water,” Gonzalez said. “But we wish we could do even more.”<\/p>\n
In this case, “more” meant waiting with the two men in below-freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n
More than an hour passed after calls were placed to both 911 and 311, with no immediate response.<\/p>\n
“We wait, and we wait. We’ve waited many hours,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n
After a station manager intervened, emergency responders arrived nearly 90 minutes after the initial 911 call.<\/p>\n
The man experiencing the medical emergency was taken away in an ambulance.<\/p>\n
The second man, tired of waiting for help, left with a friend.<\/p>\n
As temperatures remain dangerously low, outreach workers and volunteers say continued vigilance is critical to preventing further loss of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As dangerously low temperatures grip New York City, some people experiencing homelessness are entering the subways to stay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,21490,119,8408,20995,2000,9,24,63,8555,39918,34018],"class_list":["post-115703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-code-blue","tag-coney-island","tag-guardian-angels","tag-homeless","tag-homelessness","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-snow","tag-snow-alert","tag-snowstorm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}