SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Photo by Maria Danalakis

The following is a press release from Coney Island Hospital, which was been rolling out services after being shuttered by Superstorm Sandy:

Coney Island Hospital (CIH) today announced the re-opening of its Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food and nutrition program made possible with a $50,000 grant from Public Health Solutions (PHS) and the Robin Hood Foundation (RHF). The two WIC offices run by Coney Island Hospital have been closed since Hurricane Sandy, affecting 5,000 participants. The grant funding will establish a temporary new WIC office in the community to serve clients from the center that was located inside the hospital campus and is now undergoing repairs, and a second center that operated out of the Ida G. Israel Community Health Center, which is permanently closed.

The new WIC temporary offices are located at Luna Park Senior Center, 2880 West 12th Street, Room 4, Brooklyn, and are open Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The new site was chosen for its easy access to public transportation and proximity to the former Ida G. Israel Community Health Center. The grant will cover the rent of the temporary location, new office furniture, supplies, and clinical equipment. The Public Health Solutions and the Robin Hood Foundation are also supporting the Coney Island Hospital WIC staff with client and community outreach, as well as client coordination in the clinic.

“We are pleased to welcome back our WIC program clients – the women and children who depend on this vital food and nutrition assistance to keep their families healthy,” said Isabel Diaz, Director of WIC programs at Coney Island Hospital. “The opening of our temporary site at Luna Park, thanks to Public Health Solutions and the Robin Hood Foundation, is a huge comfort to our patients and a major step towards our recovery after Hurricane Sandy.”

“Public Health Solutions and its Neighborhood WIC program have been glad to be a part of Hurricane Sandy recovery work,” said Louise Cohen, Vice President, Public Health Programs at PHS. “We have had a great collaboration with the Coney Island Hospital WIC program as well as with New York State Department of Health WIC, to get this program up and running again to serve families in Coney Island. We are grateful to the Robin Hood Foundation for funding this recovery work.”

The WIC Program is federally funded special supplemental nutrition program that serves to safeguard the health of low-income, nutritionally at-risk Women, Infants and Children (to age 5).

The WIC program provides:

• Nutritious foods to supplement diets of WIC eligible participants
• Nutrition assessment and education on healthy eating and physical activity
• Breastfeeding support and counseling
• Referrals for health care and other social services

Photo: Maria Danalakis

New York City’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, sternly defended the city’s decision not to evacuate hospitals and senior centers before the advent of Superstorm Sandy, according to a report in The New York Times.

The health commissioner faced a litany of fiery questions from the City Council and argued that the decision not to evacuate the 6,300 patients to safer ground was based on information from the National Weather Service. In the time that an evacuation was capable of being executed, the NWS had reported that Sandy was headed for Long Island Sound. According to Farley, by the time it was clear that the storm would strike the heart of the city, it was too late to perform a mass evacuation.

“We couldn’t have accomplished the evacuation of everybody in Zone A before zero hour,” Farley stated at a council meeting, according to the Times.

Despite Farley’s insistence that the combination of inaccurate information and bad timing were the main cause of blame for the mess left in Sandy’s wake, City Council members wouldn’t let him off the hook.

“It was chaotic,” said Councilman David Greenfield, commenting on his own experience of observing barefoot seniors hurried out of Coney Island nursing homes, according to the New York Daily News. “It looked like a Third World country.”

The emergency evacuations that ensued following the storm were also poorly organized, leaving many family members in the dark as to where their loved ones were sent.

In the face of rigorous criticism, Farley insisted that, “due to the heroic efforts of many people, no one lost their lives in health care facilities because of the storm,” a fact that was not swallowed whole by Council members, according to the Times:

Some council members disputed that assessment, saying they believed that some deaths of old people that had been attributed to natural causes should actually have been ascribed to the storm. Dr. Farley said he was willing to look into any such deaths, but that the ultimate decision was up to the medical examiner, who had not confirmed those suspicions.

Correction (1/29/2013 at 10:41 a.m.): The original version of this article indicated the Councilman Greenfield witnessed barefoot seniors exiting Coney Island Hospital. That was an error. He witnessed them leaving Coney Island nursing homes, and the article has been amended to reflect this. We regret any confusion this may have caused.

Tipster Inna P. let us know about an accident that happened at approximately 5:40 p.m. yesterday, when a pedestrian was struck on Ocean Parkway, in front of Coney Island Hospital.

It appears the pedestrian was crossing the service road in front of the hospital when he was struck by a car. In a video Inna sent, the victim, though sprawled out on the pavement, is conscious and alert. He was rubbing his head as he stayed lying down on the street.

It’s not clear if the vehicle in the photo is the vehicle that struck him, or if the driver stayed on the scene after the accident.

Source: Coney Island Hospital

The Ida G. Israel Health Center, a Coney Island Hospital-affiliated health clinic, has been closed since Superstorm Sandy knocked it out of commission this past October. The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) has since deemed it pointless to rebuild the center on the same 2201 Neptune Avenue location and are looking for higher ground, according to a report from WNYC News.

The current location, precariously located a few blocks away from the water, treats 42,000 visitors a year, providing service for children and adults covering primary care, dentistry and drug rehabilitation. Because of the vital role the center plays in a community with a lot of low-income patients, finding a new location has become a top priority for administrators.

“With this amount of devastation, it was felt the best thing to do was relocate the clinic in the community, so this would never happen again,” Dr. John Maese, medical director of Coney Island Hospital, told WNYC. “We want to make sure this clinic stands the test of time, since it’s such a valuable resource to the community.”

Since the center’s doors have shuttered, local residents have made their way to Coney Island Hospital, a somewhat inconvenient trek for local residents without vehicles.

Dr. Maese estimates that it will take 18 months to set up a new health center, most likely to be relocated in leased office space and will cost an estimated $8 million.

Source: Maria Danalakis

FEMA has approved $103 million in aid to the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation to help fund repairs at facilities including Coney Island Hospital (2601 Ocean Parkway).

Senator Charles Schumer announced last week that the funding would come through, according to the Wall Street Journal, and will contribute to repairs at Bellevue Hospital, Goler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Metropolitan Hospital Center in addition to Coney Island.

The $103 million package still falls far from the $810 million HHC execs said they needed to come back from Sandy at a press conference two weeks ago. That number includes $200 million for Coney Island Hospital, and is the total estimated price for repairs, revenue loss and improvements to protect against future storms.

Regardless, the FEMA grant will help fill the coffers and keep repairs underway.

“I’ve seen the damage with my own eyes, and it was devastating. I appreciate FEMA listening to our pleas and getting these funds here quickly. This is not the end of the aid that these hospitals will need – not by a long shot – and we’ll keep fighting until the hospitals have been fully restored and they can get back to what they’re good at – helping New Yorkers heal and recover,” Schumer said Thursday.

Coney Island Hospital is currently open for most outpatient and some inpatient services. They expect to be fully operational and resuming emergency room intake within the next few months.

Photo Provided By Bay Improvement Group

Flu season is upon us and the good people at the Bay Improvement Group will be sending out their Mobile Medical Unit into the local community to provide free flu shots and free tetanus shots with a doctor on sight. Here are the details:

The Bay Improvement Group, in association with Coney Island Hospital, will be providing a Mobile Medical Unit to the Sheepshead Bay / Plumb Beach community.

Location: 3075 Emmons Avenue, corner of Brown Street
Dates: Thursday, Jan. 17; Friday, Jan. 18; Saturday, Jan. 19
Times: 9am-5pm

The Mobile Medical Unit will supply FREE flu shots, FREE tetanus shots, and have a doctor available.

We’d like to thank Councilman Nelson’s office for providing support in bringing this needed resource to the community, and the Department of Transportation and the 61st Precinct for their cooperation.

Bay Improvement Group
NO NEIGHBOR LEFT BEHIND
www.bayimprovementgroup.org
718-646-9206

The “all in” costs for repairing Coney Island Hospital (2601 Ocean Parkway) and upgrading it to be better prepared for future storms is approximately $200 million, Health and Hospitals Corporation President Alan Aviles told Sheepshead Bites during a press conference yesterday.

Aviles led U.S. Senator Charles Schumer and reporters on a tour of the facility, showing off the hospital’s progress nearly two and a half months after Superstorm Sandy. The two announced that repairs to the city’s public hospitals in the wake of the storm and necessary improvements will cost $810 million – an amount included in the $51 billion aid being considered in Congress.

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We’ve extensively covered the mayhem and damage visited upon Coney Island Hospital since Superstorm Sandy flooded its basement and first floor and knocked out its power late last October. A Metrofocus report now looks to the future as Coney Island Hospital, and other hospitals shut down by Sandy, begin to plan to better protect their infrastructure  and better handle mass evacuations to prevent life threatening conditions for patients in critical need.

When Sandy struck Coney Island Hospital, the situation was dire.

“It was really, really frightening because all of a sudden there were no lights […]no communication. No communication even with the telephones that we have here in the hospital. No communication with any cell phone,” Terry Mancher, the chief nursing officer at Coney Island Hospital told Metrofocus. “We were pretty much left totally by ourselves.”

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A high-powered spotlight used to illuminate Coney Island Hospital’s (2601 Ocean Parkway) construction work appears to be irking neighbors, and possibly blinding drivers.

Here’s what tipster Ed L. wrote to us:

There is a lack of concern for the neighbors and community as well as the safety of cars that come around the corner of Shore Parkway and East 6th St.  The construction crew aim the lights in the direction of Shore Pkwy and East 6th St blinding drivers as they turn the corner as well as blinding the community. I have asked for the lights to be aimed at the hospital not into the windows and streets of the community. They just don’t care.

Well, we doubt the folks there don’t care. The hospital shuttered during Sandy, and has only partially reopened as they make repairs. With thousands in the community depending on them as a 911 intake facility and provider of other critical health services, we know the team is  laboring to bring the community hospital back on line as soon as possible. But that’s no excuse for making a dangerous situation for drivers and neighbors.

Sheepshead Bites has contacted the hospital’s administration and is awaiting a response.

Source: NYC EMS via Friends of Ocean Parkway

Our friends at Friends of Ocean Parkway via the twitter feed of NYC EMS Website, turned us onto this beautiful archival photograph of an old-timey Coney Island Ambulance from the early 1900s. This horse drawn ambulance probably had to deal with patients suffering catastrophic emergencies stemming from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and diarrhea, the three most fatal diseases of the era. Thank the lord that last one rarely kills, or our esteemed editor would go through several lives a day.