NYC NOW - Deadly Cold in New York City: Who Is Most at Risk When Temperatures Plunge?

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

After a stretch of extreme cold in recent weeks, about two dozen people have died across New York City, most found outdoors and others at private residences. WNYC reporters Karen Yi and Brittany Kriegstein break down what officials know so far, including how many deaths were directly linked to hypothermia and the cases that challenge common assumptions about who is most vulnerable.

Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jena 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 child care. Emmy Liss is the executive director of.

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. 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. 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. And if the doors in your apartment don't close or latch by themselves, call 311. Close doors keep fires from spreading once they start. Walking around New York City, you can't help but notice those big piles of snow. Gotta 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 WMYC Newsroom, so my colleague Joe Hong tested some of it. Yeah, 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.

He got three different samples. The first was in Williamsburg on Metropolitan Avenue, right under the BQE. We chose that neighborhood because it's known for its poor air quality and pollution. Then Joe went to the Jackson Heights Roosevelt Avenue subway station, where he retrieves some snow from under the elevated subway track. He says there was a lot of bird poop in that one. We also know that the elevated train tracks have been known to shed lead from the old lead paint that's on them. 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. That Jackson Heights sample, it had the highest level of a bacteria called interococcus. It comes from feces from other warm-blooded animals. Animals like dogs and rats. Joe admits he thought he'd find higher levels of eterococcus 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.

Just to give you some context, the federal standard for lead in drinking water is just 15 parts per billion. 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. There is a lot of lead in the city's soil due to lead paints 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. 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. 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.

That's WMYC'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. 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.

But one of the debts 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 Yee and Brittany Crickstein have been covering the story. And they're here to answer some of those questions for me. Hey, ladies.

Hey, Jeney. So, 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? 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, Janay, is that they were people who died since January 19th. And 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 and more could roll in. Okay. But of the people found outdoors, how many deaths does the city believe were caused by hypothermia? At least 15 so far, which is information they say came from the city medical examiner's office. And as I mentioned, that that can take some time to fully parse out as they continue to investigate. Our newsrooms reporting found that some people who died outdoors actually had housing, and that was just so surprising to me. How many cases fall into that category? Yeah, 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, Chenet, 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 talked to them every day about things like this. So what happened was the details came out in these piecemeal batches, and 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. I mean, 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. I'm sure.

Yeah, but, you know, 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 doorman, and 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. And 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 and maybe he laid down somewhere,

just not aware of how cold it would be. I feel like, you know, when we're looking at the news and we see the statistics, we assume that all these people are homeless, right? But some people just like to go hang out at the park or be alone and take their mind off their problems and stuff. And, you know, not everyone who was a part of that statistic is homeless. The city felt like 10 degrees that night. And 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? 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, you know, go home, but they can't. And once the city did provide a list of the names, I think from there we were able to contact some friends and family. And the sense that I got from everyone I spoke to, it was just disbelief, right? It was sort of stunning, like you said, that people who had a place to go, had family, sort of never made it back home.

There was 47-year-old Philip Huma. He lived in Bayside with his uncles. And his stepfather told me that he stepped out to get medication for his uncles in the afternoon. And 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, you know, and 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, right? So 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 Reyesoria, Fernanda Reyesoria, his sister. told me that she's still looking for answers on why her brother was found by Van Cartland Park without any of his clothes or belongings. She actually hadn't heard from him in a few days, and she went knocking on his apartment door in the Bronx, and he wasn't there.

He wasn't there. You know, 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 She was everything It was impeccable She said, but I revised a duch

A man who had no had problems 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 He was all for me

I always I said He was all my most that was the only that my mom I mean

We were the two Contra the world I don't 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? Yeah, actually, that's kind of 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, you know, who died at private residents. 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 and he was found dead the next day. But city officials told us those people weren't included in that count of seven people, even though those stories theoretically could be included. So again, just some confusion and we're really hoping for some 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. So again, we're just still trying to parse out that information. Yeah. Previous years here. Is this year's death toll higher than it's been before? I think it's too early to know. I mean, deaths linked to cold exposure are tracked across different multiple agencies. And final tallies often take a while to crunch. So 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. And 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 Guasso 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. So I think she does expect 2026 to be an outlier once we do have a final tally. I mean, it's still very cold outside, and we have another month left of winter. Yeah, a whole month left, unfortunately. I know you guys talked about transparency, but when city officials were pressed, you know, on these numbers, what did they say about what the city can and can't prevent during extreme cold weather like this? That's right.

I mean, 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 that outside had previous interactions with homeless services, and 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 commissioner, the Department of Social Service commissioner, she did say that none of the outside deaths, this original 1819 number, those people were not on the list of the very vulnerable list that outreach reverse target first during a code blue emergency. those lists of priority people, they're checked on every two or four hours. So 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. And that's above average. That's more than they normally do. And the commissioner, when she was sort of questioned on whether they did enough of these involuntary removals to sort of force people inside, she said that the city has to follow the law, right? And there's two principles for when they,

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 sort of pushed back and said, you know, this shouldn't have happened. These deaths shouldn't have happened. But, you know, as we reported, some of these people are not on the city's radar because they did have a place to live. And in many of these cases, they had family. And something just happened where they weren't able to make it home. Yeah.

Before I let you two go, I just want to talk about the importance of being a good, neighbor, you know, during extreme cold like this. Because that's something we hear from there, Mamdani, pretty often. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you saw in some of his messaging on Instagram and social media, he was really urging people to call 3-1-1 if they saw somebody in need. I heard this message reiterated from the Department of Social Services as well. I mean, they can't be everywhere. There's about 600 outreach workers, 400 of whom are committed to doing street work constantly. But, you know, I think in the case of 47-year-old Philippuma, right? What if somebody had maybe knocked on the fire station, right? You can see the bench where he was found from the fire station. And so I think we're all sort of responsible to each other. And this sort of stretch of extreme cold, which is going to become more frequent with climate change, right, temperatures dropped very suddenly and very fast. And I think moving forward, you know, we're all, we all live together in this city. And I think we can sort of be each other's eyes and ears and help when we need it. Right. And, you know, playing off of that, I mean, 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, you know, homeless for a long period of time. They knew her. She sometimes stayed inside their building. And Jenae, they literally told me they begged her all night to come inside. They tried to give her blankets. They gave her a note with direct. to the nearest shelter, how to get there, water, money. She just refused. So they were devastated because they felt like they'd done everything they could as good neighbors to look out for somebody else.

And unfortunately, it just didn't work out. They just weren't able to get her to come inside. And she passed away the following day. So again, you know, some people tried to do everything they could. And in some cases, it just maybe wasn't enough. Yeah. That's WNYC's Brittany Krikstein and Karen Yee. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Jeney. Thank you so much. And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.