Mayor Adams under fire for ‘lack of response’ to NYC hazardous air emergency
Mayor Adams faced heat Wednesday from public school parents and political critics who accused him of dragging his feet on mobilizing a government response to the hazardous plumes of smoke that have enveloped the city.
The smoke, created by hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada, began to blow in over the Big Apple Tuesday morning. Adams’ office posted a tweet that afternoon warning New Yorkers, especially if they’re immunocompromised, elderly or children, to “limit your outdoor activities,” as the smoke can be dangerous to inhale.
But it took until 11:30 p.m. for the mayor to announce that all public school outdoor activities would be canceled Wednesday. An email to all city public school principals alerting them of the outdoor activity ban was not sent out by the Department of Education until 12:38 a.m. Wednesday, according to a copy of the message obtained by the Daily News.
“We knew very early on [Tuesday] evening that the air quality was going to be an issue,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a Manhattan public school parent and member of the city Panel for Educational Policy. “How do you take so long to notify families?”
Nisreen Muntasser, a Brooklyn mom of three public school students, said her kids were all nervous going to class Wednesday morning.
“I think they should’ve just canceled schools today,” Muntasser said.
The late-night notice on the outdoor ban caused confusion in some schools. A message sent out Wednesday morning to parents of students at Manhattan’s School of the Future high school said “students with out-lunch permission may still go out for lunch,” so long as they eat indoors, a copy obtained by The News shows. Another school in Queens proceeded as planned with a field trip to upstate New York.
“If there are specific schools that you heard that about, I’d love to know who they are, what schools those are, but the entire system has been fully notified,” Education Chancellor David Banks said at a press conference Wednesday morning when asked why some schools were seemingly allowing outdoor activities despite the mayor’s order. “There is no outdoor activity today.”
Speaking at the same news conference, Adams defended his administration’s handling of the hazardous air event, saying that top members of his team responded as quickly as possible during an “extremely fast-moving” and “unprecedented event.”
“What we should really try to prevent doing is to give any indication that this administration did not proactively respond and did not move in a right direction to let New Yorkers know,” he said. “Let’s not create controversy where there is none.”
Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a Democrat who co-chairs the Council’s Progressive Caucus, blasted the mayor for defending his “lack of response rather than taking immediate action to help New Yorkers” and argued the city had “days of warnings” that smoke from the Canadian wildfires would come down.
Restler also called on Adams to provide air purifiers at NYCHA complexes, libraries, schools and jails; limit all outdoor work for employees at municipal agencies like the Departments of Parks and Sanitation, and instruct those who can to work from home.
“We are 36 hours into an air quality emergency and other than a late night suspension of outdoor [school] activities, our city government has not taken a single proactive step to protect New Yorkers,” Restler said. “We need a full accounting and oversight hearing on why the city failed to respond to these conditions in a timely manner to ensure we aren’t caught unprepared again.”
