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Zoh’s taking friendly fire over the cold.
A blizzard of lingering life-or-death failures after Winter Storm Fern had even Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s lefty allies blasting his fledgling administration Monday.
City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn) begged her fellow Democratic Socialists of America member Mamdani for help as a Con Edison outage that left nearly 2,000 without power in crunchy granola Park Slope stretched into its second day.
The outage left locals without heat and the busy roads near Barclays Center without traffic lights, Hanif wrote in a spate of desperate X posts, pleading for “urgent coordination and clear communication” from Mamdani and City Hall, as well as ConEd.
“This is becoming unmanageable,” she posted.
“Residents deserve better.”
Likewise, outspoken DSA Councilman Chi Ossé (D-Brooklyn) used X to call on Mamdani to help find Bedford-Stuyvesant residents shelter in hotels after they’d been without power for nearly a week.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, over the weekend, broke with his ally Mamdani over the mayor’s opposition to tearing down homeless encampments and move vagrants into safety amid the bitter cold.
The progressive pleas came before came shortly before Mamdani revealed — while announcing the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building will have free public tours in June — that the death toll after the storm last week and subsequent deep freeze had risen to 16 New Yorkers, spanning from Jan. 24 to Sunday.
“The cold is showing no signs of stopping, so neither will the city’s efforts,” he said during the unrelated press conference.
But Hizzoner’s confidence belied nagging issues from the winter storm, freezing weather and his administration’s response to its first major challenge, starting with the deaths.
- Thirteen deaths came from hypothermia, with the remaining three from overdoses, Mamdani said, describing preliminary findings. “From information available now, it appears that none of the individuals who have died outside were living in homeless encampments at the time of their death,” he said, before calling the prior policy of clearing the camps a “failure.”
- Mamdani also revealed that 18 New Yorkers were involuntarily transported because they were found to be a danger to themselves or others. He said the city had made more than 930 placements to shelters and safe havens.
- EMTs told The Post that massive snow piles remaining have made it dangerously hard to maneuver around city hospitals. Emergency responders can’t easily move stretchers and patients, some of whom need wheelchairs or walkers, have had to trudge through treacherous snow, they said.
- Mountains of trash have kept growing after sanitation workers, who’ve been focused on snow removal, and are running 24 hours behind.
Besides the gray mounds of rock-hard snow lining streets and blocking in parked car, the most visible persistent problem for New Yorkers was arguably the ever-growing mounds of garbage and recycling.
One garbage pile off East 88th Street within sight of Mamdani’s new home of Gracie Mansion — which was featured on The Post’s cover Monday — even grew taller during the day.
Xavier Fernandez, 36, resident manager at the East End Avenue apartment building, said sanitation workers had missed three pickups since the storm. He said they only picked up recycling Monday and left the trash to continue piling up.
“This will be the fourth time we’re putting out garbage on top of this pile and they still haven’t picked it up,” he said. “It just got up to 8 feet tall.”
Other massive mounds of refuse could be spotted in the Financial District outside 55 Exchange Place, where a worker said trash hadn’t been picked up since Monday.
“Trash is up to date now, in the sense that Monday trash is being collected today, Monday,” a sanitation spokesperson said. “Recycling remains delayed by about 24 hours. This is due to the 12-15 inches of snow received last weekend.”
The Brooklyn power outages highlighted by Hanif and Ossé persisted Monday, despite their agitating for help.
A Con Edison spokesperson said the Park Slope outage was caused by road salt mixed with water seeping into the underground power system.
“On top of that, compacted snow and ice remain on the manholes that crews need to reach to access equipment and make repairs,” the rep said in a statement. “In some cases, snowed in cars are parked on top of them. We are working in close coordination with city agencies to dig out dense, frozen layers of snow and ice just to access the system.
“These conditions are why portions of certain neighborhoods are experiencing outages, and why restorations have taken longer than anticipated.”
Park Slope resident Tatyana Gudin, who sat in an MTA bus converted into an impromptu city warming center, said she has been totally without power since Saturday night. She vented her frustration at ConEd, saying she has been sleeping under three blankets at night.
“Stop, stop, stop giving excuses, and do better,” she said to the utility.
Hanif has called on ConEd to reimburse residents for costs such as travel and temporary accommodations.
City Hall officials said they’ve been in touch with Hanif and been in direction communication with ConEd since Sunday.
— Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick and Nicole Rosenthal
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