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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 6 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 43, No. 16 • April 17–23, 2020
BROOKLYN’S ESSENTIAL HEALTH CARE FEELING THE STRAIN
TURN ON THE SIRENS
By Jessica Parks
Brooklyn Paper
Ambulances in Brooklyn are
being delayed by up to two hours
as emergency rooms are overrun
with a massive influx of patients
infected with the novel coronavirus,
according to statistics from
a first responders union.
“Generally an ambulance used
to get in and out between 20 to 30
minutes, now it’s like an hour to
two hours depending on the severity,”
said Vinny Variale, FDNY
EMT and president of the Uniformed
EMS Officers Union.
Protocol requires the city’s
paramedics to wait with patients
until the hospital has an
available bed — and the aboveaverage
wait times force crucial
emergency services to be held up
in hospital parking lots, rather
than responding to other emergency
calls.
“Longer wait times keep an
ambulance at the hospital longer,
and unable to go back in service,”
Variale said. “I can’t respond to
the next call.”
Wait times in Brooklyn are
second in the city to neighboring
Queens, which recorded the
highest average delays in the Five
Boroughs as the area becomes
a national hotspot for the pandemic,
which is compounded by
the low volume of nearby hospitals,
said Variale.
“It is really all about the hospitals
being overwhelmed and not
having the ability to put the patients
anywhere,” he said. “Finding
a hospital that is available
when you need one is a hot commodity
these days.”
And while hospitals are delaying
paramedics’ response time,
emergency services are seeing record
high volumes of calls.
Making matters worse, Variale
claimed that 24 percent of first
responders — who routinely interact
closely with coronavirus
patients — are out sick, leaving
emergency personnel vastly overworked
in order to keep up.
“So we are really dealing with
an increased call volume and a
smaller amount of people handling
the call volume,” Variale said.
“And it is taking a toll physically,
mentally, emotionally. Paramedics
are really feeling it.”
Paramedics have also seen a
sharp rise in cardiac arrest calls
since the onset of the crisis, with
more than 300 calls per day citywide,
compared with an average
of 80 daily calls prior to the pan-
Nurses at Wyckoff Hospital demanded safer conditions.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Nurses and administrators
at the Wyckoff Heights Medical
Center on April 10 called
on government officials to supply
the hospital with more staff,
equipment, and COVID-19 tests
as the facility grapples with a
surge in patients due to the viral
outbreak.
The lack of sufficient staff and
supplies has left workers at the
hospital on Bushwick’s Stockholm
Street scrambling to adjust
Local ambulances suffer long delays, staffi ng shortages during pandemic
demic, according to Variale.
In order to keep ambulances
staffed, Variale said overtime has
been through the roof with paramedics
working 16 hour-shifts,
four to five days a week, since
the onset of COVID-19.
“Right now more than ever, we
have a lot of overtime,” Variale
said. “People are working double
shifts almost everyday.”
But the situation did not come
out of nowhere, according to the
union head, who said the unit has
also been denied proper funding
and preparation.
“To exacerbate the problem
Photo by Photo courtesy of the Uniformed EMS Officers Union
further, EMS has always been
grossly underfunded and understaffed,”
Variale said. “So we went
into this crisis understaffed, and
now 24 percent of the workforce
is out sick.”
Variale blasted FDNY brass
for advising paramedics to only
adorn gloves and face masks in
high-risk situations in an effort to
conserve medical supply stockpiles
— saying emergency medical
staff should always be given
proper protective gear when responding
to all calls to keep from
falling ill, or spreading the virus
to others.
“They are trying to ration
masks, but any call we go to we
have to be concerned we are going
to be exposed to the coronavirus,”
he said. “And we have
told paramedics if you don’t feel
safe, don’t worry about the department,
use it and will be there
to defend you rigorously.”
If a paramedic shows symptoms
for the virus, they have been
put up in hotels to distance them
from their families and others —
but, Variale said, many asymptomatic
first responders have
taken to sleeping in their cars out
of an abundance of caution.
“They don’t want to go home
and bring this to their family,” he
said. “And more importantly, if
they are positive, they don’t want
to give it to their patients.”
Alternative housing for paramedics
has been partially funded
by the EMS FDNY Help Fund
which provides financial support
to the city’s emergency personnel,
who Variale claims are severely
underpaid.
“In this time of need, a lot of
them they need places to stay,
they need food, they need help,”
Variale said. “The income of an
EMT is $48,000 a year. A lot of
them can’t afford to eat out every
night or pay for a lot of these
things.”
Donations can be made to
EMS FDNY Help Fund at www.
emsfdnyhelpfund.com.
Ambulances are seeing wait times of up to two hours at
Brooklyn hospitals.
Demand additional staff,
supplies to battle COVID-19
Corey Finger, NYSNA
Nurses in need
CORONAVIRUS
CRISIS IN
BROOKLYN
See NURSES on page 4
One business that’s booming
Brooklyn cemeteries struggle to keep up amid new surge in deaths
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn’s cemeteries are grappling
with the substantial increase in deaths
due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and
struggling to accommodate the influx
of burials and cremations.
“Cremations have more than doubled,
and it just reached the point where we
had to put a cap on how many bodies we
receive every day,” said Eric Barna, the
vice president of operations of Green-
Wood Cemetery.
The landmark Fifth Avenue cemetery
has limited the amount of cremations
to around 20 per day due to their
limited space capacity for the deceased
remains, he said.
Likewise, burials have gone up significantly
in recent days, with 15 interments
on April 9, compared to their usual
two or three per day, said Barna.
The death count for Brooklynites due
to the novel coronavirus tallied at 1,954
people as of April 14 out of 6840 citywide,
and Governor Andrew Cuomo
announced the same day that the state
would bring in additional funeral directors
to deal with the number of New
Yorkers that have passed.
With the climbing death count and increasing
infection rates, Catholic cemeteries
and graveyards have also taken
additional safety measures, according
to John Quaglione, a spokesman for the
Diocese of Brooklyn, which manages
the Holy Cross Cemetery in East Flatbush
along with smaller parish cemeteries
in the borough and three cemeteries
in neighboring Queens.
The religious organization is limiting
the number of attendants at graveside
ceremonies to 10 people, in accordance
with a statewide order — but Quaglione
noted that this has left larger families
with hard choices, unimaginable
just weeks ago.
“If you’re the 11th person in the family,
or if it’s just a friend of yours, or a
neighbor, you can’t go,” he said. “It becomes
a question of who goes to a ceremony
and those are all tough personal
and family decisions we have to make
until this curve is flattened.”
As hospitals ban visits to patients to
stem the outbreak of COVID-19, funerals
offer a last chance to be with one’s
loved ones during these difficult times,
Quaglione said.
“It’s really the opportunity — the
only opportunity — to say goodbye to
a loved one,” he said.
For the city’s Jewish cemeteries, the
New York Board of Rabbis advised that
rabbis host burial rites and funeral services
via video conference, while limiting
funeral attendance to four mourners,
the Queens Eagle reported.
Delays due to the health crisis have
also made it difficult to follow Jewish
customs of burial within 24 hours, Board
of Rabbis Vice President Joseph Potasnik
told that paper.
Green-Wood Cemetery has yet to limit
the number of people at graveside ceremonies,
but is working with families to
adhere to social distancing guidelines,
but allows for no more than 10 people at
indoor ceremonies, Barna said.
The cemetery has also cut its staff
in half, working on rotation to allow
them to better practice social distancing
and give them a break after working
long hours. One of their mechanics
Green-Wood Cemetery has experienced a surge in burials and cremations
due to COVID-19.
Photo by Wikimedia Commons
contracted the respiratory illness from
his son, according to Barna, who praised
employees dealing with these exceptional
circumstances.
“All our workers have been fantastic.
They knew based on the role the cemetery
provides, we couldn’t run and hide
from this thing,” he said. We’re not first
responders but we’re in that chain and we
have to deal with that business.”
How long is the Trader Joe’s line? This man can tell you!
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
He’s putting the line online!
A Cobble Hill man has begun
updating neighbors about the line
outside Trader Joe’s Court Street
outpost using the Twitter handle
@TraderJoesLine, allowing
would-be shoppers to assess the
wait time before heading to their
beloved emporium of discounted
groceries and Hawaiian shirt-clad
employees.
“It was really just boredom,
looking out the window every
day,” said Jacob Shwirtz, who lives
across the street from the Atlantic
Avenue food seller. “At one point I
figured, why not make it a useful
service for my neighbors.”
For example: “With 30 minutes
to go before opening, we have over
50 people stretching all the way
to Clinton. It’s going to be a busy
day! Tweet us any time for an update.”
Shwirtz, who is unaffiliated
Joe’s, but over the past few weeks
there’s always been a line,” he
said.
Trader Joe’s, where employees
are known to deftly organize lines,
has limited the amount of customers
permitted inside their outposts
in an effort to keep people a safe
distance from one another to help
stem the spread of the highly-contagious
virus.
Those measures have caused
the line outside to stretch several
dozen people long, sometimes
snaking all around the block, according
to Shwirtz.
“Last Saturday, there were well
over 100 people wrapping around
the entire block, that was insane,”
he said.
The line guru recommends
dropping by early on rainy days,
such as April 13, when he counted
a mere eight patrons waiting in the
wet weather.
One Twitter user applauded
Shwirtz’s updates, saying she would
like to see someone emulate the idea
Photo by Kevin Duggan
LINE OF THE TIMES: The line outside Trader Joe’s on Court Street in mid-March, prior to
strict social distancing guidelines.
with the California-based grocery
chain, posts updates on request
— color-coded in green, yellow,
or red to signal on the amount
of shoppers waiting to get in the
store, which has been overrun amid
the outbreak of COVID-19.
“Even before the pandemic, it
would be a super popular Trader
Jacob Shwirtz seen watching
the line from his apartment
window.
Jacob Shwirtz
for other gourmet grocers.
“This is so brilliant. Now if I
could find one keeping watch at
Gowanus Whole Foods,” tweeted
Kelly Gordon.
Another Twitter user echoed
Gordon’s praise, lauding the innovative
and “important” use of
social media.
“I knew at some point in my
life my most important twitter follow
would be a trader joe’s line
tracker,” wrote Max Bohm. “I just
didnt sic expect it to happen so
soon…”
Shwirtz has ventured on the line
only twice in the past few weeks,
saying he prefers to get his groceries
at smaller local businesses,
because being a parent juggling
his job and his kids adapting to
remote schooling doesn’t allow
him to wait for hours on end in
the street.
“I just don’t want to stand in
that line,” he said. “And it’s also
good to support smaller local businesses.”
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