NYC NOW - July 12, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Mayor Adams defends his administration’s response to the air quality due to the June wildfires in Canada, as the city council examines the issue. Meanwhile, a shooting in a Bronx park leaves four, including two children, injured. Subway surfing, a perilous trend in New York City, claims two teen lives, prompting the MTA and Mayor Adams to request social media companies halt the spread of related videos. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen, however, highlights a local teen taking a unique stance. Lastly, Hudson Valley officials are grappling with recovery strategies following the recent destructive storms and floods. WNYC’s Michael Hill discussing the cleanup with Orange County’s Commissioner of Emergency Services, Brendan Casey.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, July 12th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. An oversight hearing is underway right now in the New York City Council, as council members examine the Adams administration's response to last month's air quality emergency. So far today, the focus has been on how the city communicates with New Yorkers and current forecasting capabilities for monitoring air quality.

Stay with WMIC for more updates. Four people, including two children, are recovering after being shot at a park in the Bronx yesterday evening. Police say the shooter rode the back of a scooter to St. James Park. The gunman got off and started shooting. NM.P.D. Chief of Patrol, John Chelle. However, once again, we have a recovering theme in the city. Illegal bikes, illegal firearms,

people who pull those firearms. Over the weekend, a man on a scooter went on a shooting spree across several barrels, killing one person. All four victims are expected to be okay. No arrest have been reported. The investigation is underway. 88 and sunny right now, as we said, an air quality alert again today. Sunny in 93 for a high today.

And then tomorrow's slim chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms. It's partly sunny 91, but it's going to feel like it's the mid-90s. Again, 88 and sunny. Subway surfing, it's a trend in New York City that's become more popular and deadly. It claimed the lives of two teenagers in recent weeks. The MTA and Mayor Eric Adams are asking social media companies to stop spreading subway surfing videos. But as WNYC Stephen Nesson reports, one local teen is taking a much different approach. This sound is from a video of a subway train roaring through a tunnel,

except it's filmed from a place most riders will never see, the top of a train. The video then cuts to several breathtaking images of city skylines and graffiti tag subway tunnels. Their images taken by subway surfer, Kasi Loriano. He didn't really process it as being something dangerous. That's Loreano's classmate and friend Alexander Antelman, who created a video montage now on display at the autochurchase.

Oculus Transit Center in Lower Manhattan. It was more just him urban exploring and having fun. And I think that at some point, after you do stuff like this, a lot of times, you feel invincible. Like nothing's going to happen to you. But last August, Luriano died while riding on top of a seven train at Hudson Yards. Antleman says the exhibit is a way to honor his friend and hopefully prevent another person from suffering the same fate. I wanted to do something for him. You know, I didn't want him to be left totally in vain.

So this is what I did. Throughout the video, text messages pop up on the bottom of the screen. There's some of the last words Antelman sent to his friend. One reads, Yo, K bro, let me know if you're good, in text shorthand. Then another text appears. It's from Loryano's mom. Hey, do you know where Kasi is?

He didn't come home last night. Antelman hopes the contrast between death-defying images and the reality of a mom's worried messages will resonate with subway surfers or anyone thinking about trying it. Still, the number of subway surfing deaths keeps ticking up. There have been four so far this year, compared to just five between 2018 and 2022. And the MTA says there have been more than 1,300 recordings of people riding outside or on top of subway trains since the start of 2022.

Antelman hopes his video exhibit will be a wake-up call, but he knows it won't change everyone's mind. I mean, this stuff has been happening from, like, my research forever since the trains were first in New York. So I guess it's more widespread now, but it's always existed. And I don't think that they could really stop it, to be honest. Antelman does see some change. He says after Kossi Luriano died, his group of friends stopped subway surfing. Stephen Nesson, WNYC News. Hudson Valley officials are figuring out how to get the support they need as the region begins

cleaning up and rebuilding after the devastating storms and floods this weekend. Brendan Casey is the Orange County Commissioner of Emergency Services, and he joins us now. Commissioner, how are you, sir? Good. Thanks for having me on. You're welcome. We're a few days from the actual rainfall now. What's it like on the ground where you are today? Well, we're slowly getting those roads open. The CSX rail line, which runs along the river, is now open from what they've told us, which is amazing, the amount of work they did down there. but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. There's still a lot of damage that needs to be mitigated.

So I'm on my way to a meeting now. We have an incident command system set up down there and provide for human needs, infrastructure repair. And so far, the elected officials have been very supportive. So we're hoping that support continues up to the federal level. What kind of improvement have you seen over the last couple of days? Well, when the event happened, the entire village in that town was cut off from road traffic. We couldn't get any resources in there.

Whatever was in there was basically trapped in there. So the main thing we wanted the road crews and DOT to do was get the roads open so we could begin getting people and resources in there. So that's happened. We can get in and out now. There's one way in and out off of 293. 9W is still in bad shape. The Popolopen Bridge, which is just north of the Bear Mountain Circle, is still closed, and 9W coming over the mountain from Cornwall into the West Point Highland Falls area, is still closed.

So there's still a lot of challenges there, but you can move around on the streets. We have bridge inspection teams in there. We've respected the reservoir or the dams. So we're moving in the right direction. It's just still going to take some time. Commissioner, you've worked on the ground in the area for quite some time. You worked your way up through the state trooper ranks and even worked at the World Trade Center site after 9-11.

What are the challenges your teams are facing right now? You know, all of these events are, you know, they're similar in the sense that, you know, there's the traumatic event, and then you have to stand up your incident command team to tackle the various problems that are associated with it. So, yeah, I've been doing it for 37 years now, and you kind of learn along the way what not to do, what to do.

We ran the COVID response for the county, which was a never-ending event. So, yeah, it's been a long career. But, you know, the county executive new house hires, a lot of people with expertise, and we bring that to bear when these small villages and towns kind of get overwhelmed, we come in as a county team and we can bring our state partners in. So we have a good, good team in place and, you know, we'll get it fixed.

Commissioner, just a few seconds left here. What support do residents need to folks who are pumping out water and clearing up the debris? Yeah, we have a 3-1-1 line in Orange County. They can call that for any concerns or questions they have. There is a aid center opened at the Sacred Heart church in the village there. So we're addressing the human needs and we have to put your damage assessments together in order to get to a certain threshold for a FEMA declaration. So we're working on that. And right now we're just trying to make sure that we get whatever aid we can in there monetarily to the municipalities and individuals if we can get to that threshold. So we're working on that at this point.

Thank you, Brendan Casey, is Orange County's Commission of Emergency Services on his way to Highland Falls this morning. Commissioner, thank you. Great. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC.

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