Hundreds Lose Power In Queens; At-Risk Locals Lack Cooling Sites

QUEENS — In the midst of New York City's hottest three-day stretch of the year, hundreds of people in Queens are without power Wednesday afternoon, and many vulnerable residents in the borough lack public, air conditioned facilities in their neighborhoods.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and city officials urged New Yorkers in an emergency news conference to reduce their use of electricity, including air conditioners, as the “heat emergency” continues to cause outages across the city.

In the same news conference, the Mayor was pressed about what the city is doing to open more city-run cooling centers in Queens — which Patch reported has the second-fewest number of cooling centers among the city’s five boroughs, despite being the second-most populous borough.

“We are adding centers literally day by day,” said Mayor de Blasio, adding that some cooling centers that have remained closed because of COVID will reopen soon, but not until “next week.”

“We have a substantial number of cooling centers and we literally have been adding over the last few days,” said the Mayor.

As of Wednesday the city has added a handful of additional cooling centers to Queens, upping the total to 40 centers, which are expected to serve the borough’s 2.2 million residents.

By contrast, Manhattan, which is home to roughly 600,000 fewer people than Queens, still has 13 more cooling sites. Also, while more than 550 Queens residents are without power, only 32 Manhattanites are currently without power.

Despite the addition of five cooling centers in Queens, the city-run sites remain lacking in many neighborhoods that are home to people who are more vulnerable to heat-related illness and death.

In southeastern Queens, cooling centers are virtually absent in a handful of neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly populated by low-income Black residents, despite the fact that two times as many Black New Yorkers die of heat-related illnesses compared to the city's white residents, according to city data.

Also, Patch reported that three of the four Queens neighborhoods with the borough's highest population of seniors do not have a local senior-only cooling center.

Among those neighborhoods is Forest Hills, which doesn’t have a cooling center at all. On Tuesday, residents in that area were also specifically asked by Con Edison to not use energy-intensive appliances, including air conditioners, while crews complete repairs.

Emergency management commissioner John Scrivani said that the city is working to reopen more cooling centers, though he believes they are in less demand because the city distributed tens-of-thousands of air conditioners last year — which New Yorkers are now being asked to not use by the Mayor.

"Set it at a higher temperature if you need the air conditioning," said Mayor de Blasio, urging New Yorkers to limit their use of air conditioners and other high-power devices until Thursday morning, at which point the heat is expected to break.