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Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. This winter has been no joke. Almost two dozen New Yorkers have lost their lives due to the extreme cold, raising questions about who is most vulnerable during low temperatures. We'll get into it all, but first, here's what's happening in the city. The Mamdani administration is inching closer to delivering its promise of universal childcare. Emmy Liss is the executive director of the Office of Child Care. She says the city is surveying providers to determine in which neighborhoods the city's free care for two-year-olds will start this fall, and whether the programs will stretch for the full year or just the school year.

Emmy Liss: We feel the weight of what this promise means to families and to child care providers, and so I would say I feel appropriately daunted, but really honored to have this task in front of me, and the opportunity to take this promise and really work to deliver it.

Janae Pierre: The city is also pushing families to sign up for existing free preschool programs for three and four-year-olds by the deadline later this month. During a historically cold winter, New York City officials from the Fire Department and Department of Buildings are reminding people how they can stay both safe and warm. For one, you should only keep space heaters on flat surfaces, and exercise extreme caution when putting them around your apartment.

Keep them far away from flammable materials, like curtains and furniture, and never leave them on in an empty room. Even in extreme circumstances, you should never use a gas oven or stove to keep your apartment warm. These appliances run the risk of filling your apartment with gas, which could start a fire. If the doors in your apartment don't close or latch by themselves, call 311. Closed doors keep fires from spreading once they start.

Walking around New York City, you can't help but notice those big piles of snow. Got to admit, it was given winter wonderland the day after the January snowstorm, but now, it's just gross. Those piles of remaining snow are covered in soot and stained in all kinds of unspeakable things. It started a conversation in the WNYC newsroom, so my colleague, Joe Hong, tested some of it.

Joe Hong: Yes, I put on some gloves and scooped out about a gallon of snow into a bucket at each of these locations and then brought those buckets back to the office, waited for the snow to melt, and then put that liquid into different bottles and shipped it off to the lab.

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Janae Pierre: He got three different samples. The first was in Williamsburg on Metropolitan Avenue, right under the BQE.

Joe Hong: We chose that neighborhood because it's known for its poor air quality and pollution.

Janae Pierre: Then Joe went to the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue subway station, where he retrieved some snow from under the elevated subway track. He says there was a lot of bird poop in that one.

Joe Hong: We also know that the elevated train tracks have been known to shed lead from the old lead paint that's on them.

Janae Pierre: Lastly, Joe went to Washington Heights because that's the neighborhood with the highest number of 311 complaints related to people not picking up after their dogs. The findings from those three locations, Joe says, were not shocking. He tested for a variety of metals, including lead, chromium, and cadmium. All of which were found in the samples. Joe also tested for bacteria.

Joe Hong: That Jackson Heights sample, it had the highest level of a bacteria called Enterococcus. It comes from feces from other warm-blooded animals.

Janae Pierre: Animals like dogs and rats. Joe admits he thought he'd find higher levels of Enterococcus in the Washington Heights sample, where all those dog poop complaints were coming from. He says Washington Heights also had the lowest lead level at about 113 parts per billion.

Joe Hong: Just to give you some context, the federal standard for lead in drinking water is just 15 parts per billion.

Janae Pierre: To be clear, Joe says that's not a fair comparison because we drink drinking water. We don't drink snow. Still, though, he says that the Jackson Heights sample had the highest lead levels at about 278 parts per billion, while the Williamsburg sample tested at 125 parts per billion. Joe says the source of the lead isn't just the elevated subway tracks.

Joe Hong: There is a lot of lead in the city soil due to lead paint in some cases, and decades of burning leaded gasoline. A soil scientist I talked to said just a little bit of soil can contaminate the snow, but he said the levels we found in the snow were much lower than what you'd find in soil or dirt.

Janae Pierre: Joe says the major takeaway from all these snow samples is that the dirty snow is just holding up a mirror to the sanitary conditions of the city.

Joe Hong: These are all things we'd find in the air, in our streets. It's gross to look at, but not a public health hazard as long as you leave it be.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Joe Hong. Still ahead, nearly two dozen people froze to death during the cold stretch in New York City. Some of them weren't even homeless or living on the streets. More on what happened after the break.

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Janae Pierre: After a stretch of extreme cold in recent weeks, officials say about two dozen people died across New York City. Most were found outdoors or in public spaces, and others at private residences. One of the deaths involved a 29-year-old man who had an apartment and lived just blocks from where he was found dead in a Bronx park. That raises some basic questions. Who is actually most at risk during extreme cold, and what does the city really know about these deaths? WNYC reporters Karen Yi and Brittany Kriegstein have been covering the story, and they're here to answer some of those questions for me. Hey, ladies.

Brittany Kriegstein: Hey, Janae.

Karen Yi: Hey, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Brittany, I want to start with you. As I mentioned, city officials say about two dozen people died during this cold stretch. What breakdown did they give between people found outdoors and people found at private residences?

Brittany Kriegstein: Sure, so city officials are saying that 19 people were found outdoors in public spaces, and an additional seven were discovered at private homes, though City Hall hasn't specified whether they were found inside or outside. What officials have said about those people, specifically, Janae, is that they were people who died since January 19th. Autopsies later revealed that hypothermia had played a role in their deaths, so we didn't know about them initially, but we do know about them now. More could roll in.

Janae Pierre: Okay, but of the people found outdoors, how many deaths does the city believe were caused by hypothermia?

Brittany Kriegstein: At least 15 so far, which is information they say came from the city medical examiner's office. As I mentioned, that can take some time to fully parse out as they continue to investigate.

Janae Pierre: Our newsroom's reporting found that some people who died outdoors actually had housing. That was just so surprising to me. How many cases fall into that category?

Brittany Kriegstein: Yes, it really was surprising to us, too. So far, we found that five of the people on that list had places to live, but they either never made it home or they just ended up outside. Now, to preface this, Janae, I should say that this reporting was a real challenge. Because of some confusion between the NYPD and City Hall, we weren't getting full information about some of these deaths, which we normally would get from the police department.

We talk to them every day about things like this. What happened was the details came out in these piecemeal batches. We didn't have any of the names of these folks at first, so we literally suited and booted up in those below-freezing temperatures to knock on doors and scout out street corners. The snow at that point was up to our ankles. I literally had ski pants on and couldn't do much typing on my phone before feeling my hands start to freeze.

Janae Pierre: I'm sure.

Brittany Kriegstein: Yes, but trudging through the mess of a city, digging out from the snowstorm was, in fact, worth it because we found concerned neighbors and store owners and doormen. They gave us some important details. We also were able to reach some relatives by phone. I spoke to the sister of that 29-year-old man you mentioned. His name was Kenneth Luna. His sister said he was just walking through St. Mary's Park on January 28th, which is just a few blocks from the Bronx apartment he shared with his mom. She said it was something he even did often, but she suspects he had a few drinks. Maybe he lay down somewhere, just not aware of how cold it would be.

Maria Luna: I feel like when we're looking at the news, and we see the statistics, we assume that all these people are homeless, right? Some people just like to go hang out at the park or be alone and take their mind off their problems and stuff. Not everyone who was a part of that statistic is homeless.

Brittany Kriegstein: The city felt like 10 degrees that night. She said, possibly, there was no one around to help him. He was found dead the next day. Is there anything that you think the city should know about what happened to him, and anything that could be done to keep people safe from this kind of thing in the future?

Maria Luna: If police can patrol the parks when it's really cold out to see if there's anyone in need of help or if anyone is in a condition where they might want to go home, but they can't.

Karen Yi: Once the city did provide a list of the names, I think from there, we were able to contact some friends and family. The sense that I got from everyone I spoke to, it was just disbelief, right? It was stunning, like you said, that people who had a place to go, had family, never made it back home. There was 47-year-old Philip Piuma. He lived in Bayside with his uncles. His stepfather told me that he stepped out to get medication for his uncles in the afternoon.

He died five blocks away from where he lived. He was actually found outside of a Key Food on a bench. It seemed like he slipped and fell, broke his nose, maybe sat down to stabilize himself, and then just never made it back. His stepfather is in disbelief. He told me that he wishes somebody would have helped him. There's video surveillance that he's seen where people are giving him tissues, but he died right in front of a fire station. Help was really, really close by. It just never arrived.

I also spoke to the sister of the youngest victim. That's 27-year-old Daniel Reyes Soria. Fernanda Reyes Soria, his sister, told me that she's still looking for answers on why her brother was found by Van Cortlandt Park without any of his clothes or belongings. She actually hadn't heard from him in a few days. She went knocking on his apartment door in the Bronx, and he wasn't there.

Fernanda Reyes Soria: [knocking] Daniel? Daniel? Hermano.

Karen Yi: He wasn't there. His apartment was pristine. He hadn't been there in a few days. She reported him to the police, and that's when she found out that he had died and been found outside.

Fernanda Reyes Soria: Su cama impecable, el aseo impecable, todo estaba impecable. Yo dije, "Pero," yo decía. "Pero." Entonces, yo reviso la ducha, eh, un niño que no tenía problemas.

Karen Yi: Fernanda says he was everything to her. When their mother passed away when they were young, they really formed a special bond. She says it was them two against the world.

Fernanda Reyes Soria: Él era todo para mí. Yo siempre le decía a él que él era todo lo mío, que fue lo único que me quedó de mi mamá. O sea, nosotros éramos los dos contra el mundo. Yo no tenía a nadie más.

Janae Pierre: These stories are just all so sad and unfortunate. Brittany, for the deaths that happened at private residences, what did officials say about the role of missing heat or hot water? Did that play a role at all?

Brittany Kriegstein: Yes. Actually, that's been a frustrating thing that we've encountered so far is a lack of information about some of these deaths. City Hall hasn't shared much about the circumstances of those people who died at private residences like you said. We reported on a 90-year-old woman with dementia who wandered outside her Brooklyn home at night and died in a nearby backyard.

We also reported on an 81-year-old man, who seemingly slipped on the ice while walking across his Brooklyn roof. He was found dead the next day. City officials told us those people weren't included in that count of seven people, even though those stories theoretically could be included. Again, just some confusion, and we're really hoping for some more transparency on this.

City officials did separately confirm, however, that January had the most heat and hot-water complaints for a single month in the city's history, so that's significant. Officials say they've dispatched housing inspectors and closed out almost all of those complaints made to 311, but we've also been hearing from tenants who say they went days without heat or hot water during the frigid temps. Again, we're just still trying to parse out that information.

Janae Pierre: Yes, previous years here. Is this year's death toll higher than it's been before?

Karen Yi: I think it's too early to know. Deaths linked to cold exposure are tracked across different multiple agencies, and final tallies often take a while to crunch. I don't think we'll see this year's numbers for a long time, but health department data for previous years shows there were 52 people who died from cold exposure in 2022. That number was 39 people in 2023.

We don't have 2024 data yet because there's a lag, but the head of the Department of Social Services, this is Molly Wasow Park, she testified at a City Council hearing this week that the number of deaths from this stretch of cold could fall, what she said, outside the norm. She says, usually, there's anywhere from 10 to 20 deaths from hypothermia in a year. It seems from the health data that I just cited, those numbers have been higher in more recent years. I think she does expect 2026 to be an outlier once we do have a final tally. It's still very cold outside, and we have another month left of winter.

Janae Pierre: Yes, a whole month left, unfortunately. I know you guys talked about transparency. When city officials were pressed on these numbers, what did they say about what the city can and can't prevent during extreme cold weather like this?

Karen Yi: That's right. Part of the criticism, particularly at this City Council hearing I mentioned, was whether the administration and their outreach teams did enough to bring homeless people inside. We do know that some of the people found it outside had previous interactions with homeless services. That could range from anything from somebody who was at a shelter maybe 10, 20 years ago, or they were contacted by an outreach team.

Those details are still emerging. The Department of Social Services commissioner, she did say that none of the outside deaths, this original 18, 19 number, those people were not on the list of the very vulnerable lists that outreach workers target first during a Code Blue emergency. Those lists of priority people, they're checked on every two or four hours. None of these outdoor deaths were on that list.

The city did say they also involuntarily removed more than 80 people between DSS and NYPD during the cold stretch. That's above average. That's more than they normally do. The commissioner, when she was questioned on whether they did enough of these involuntary removals to force people inside, she said that the city has to follow the law. There's two principles for when they can do this.

One is if a person has a mental illness or are presenting as a danger to themselves. Some council members were pushed back and said, "This shouldn't have happened. These deaths shouldn't have happened." As we reported, some of these people are not on the city's radar because they did have a place to live. In many of these cases, they had family. Something just happened where they weren't able to make it home.

Janae Pierre: Before I let you two go, I just want to talk about the importance of being a good neighbor during extreme cold like this, because that's something we hear from Mayor Mamdani pretty often.

Karen Yi: Yes, I think so. You saw in some of his messaging on Instagram and social media, he was really urging people to call 311 if they saw somebody in need. I heard this message reiterated from the Department of Social Services as well. They can't be everywhere. There's about 600 outreach workers. 400 of whom are committed to doing street work constantly. I think in the case of 47-year-old Philip Piuma, what if somebody had maybe knocked on the fire station?

You can see the bench where he was found from the fire station. I think we're all responsible to each other. This stretch of extreme cold, which is going to become more frequent with climate change, temperatures drop very suddenly and very fast. I think moving forward, we all live together in this city. I think we can be each other's eyes and ears and help when we need it.

Brittany Kriegstein: Right. Playing off of that, I did speak to some people who did everything they could to be those good neighbors. I spoke to a family in Brooklyn, near East New York, who told me that a woman literally died outside their window. She was homeless for a long period of time. They knew her. She sometimes stayed inside their building. Janae, they literally told me they begged her all night to come inside.

They tried to give her blankets. They gave her a note with directions to the nearest shelter, how to get there, water, money. She just refused. They were devastated because they felt like they'd done everything they could as good neighbors to look out for somebody else. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out. They just weren't able to get her to come inside. She passed away the following day. Again, some people tried to do everything they could. In some cases, it just maybe wasn't enough.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Brittany Kriegstein and Karen Yi. Thanks a lot.

Karen Yi: Thanks, Janae.

Brittany Kriegstein: Thank you so much.

Janae Pierre: Thank you for listening to NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. See you next time.

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