Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted Friday he has no current plan to keep New Yorkers cool this summer if the city’s coronavirus lockdown continues through Labor Day, closing public beaches, pools and playgrounds.
“Today we’re not dealing with heat waves, but we sure did last summer, so we have to be ready,” de Blasio acknowledged in a City Hall conference call with reporters, a day after he announced that outdoor public pools would not open for the season and beaches would likely be off limits as well.
“We have to have a plan to prepare for the potential of a hot summer and make sure we can keep people safe in that vein. We will. We will for sure. And we’ll publish it when we have it,” de Blasio said, without offering any timeline for a stay-cool scheme.
The only suggestion the mayor presented was public cooling facilities for New Yorkers who don’t have air conditioning in their homes.
“You could in principle have a cooling center, for example, where folks could go to get cool but with clear social distancing rules,” the mayor said.
He reiterated that he can’t envision city beaches opening this year, but promised “a lot of enforcement” to prevent people from swimming at unguarded beaches.
“I understand there will be a temptation and we have to guard against it,” he said.
But later Friday Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state needs a regional approach to closing beaches and parks.
“You open your beaches, but I don’t open my beaches, my people are going to go to your beach,” Cuomo said at his daily Albany press briefing.
“These decisions are all interconnected. What you do with your beaches affects me. It can be beaches, it can be parks,” Cuomo said.
De Blasio also dismissed concerns by the city’s former parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, that closing pools will cause a major spike in drowning deaths, as kids seek relief in rivers and ponds.
“I fundamentally disagree with him,” the mayor said.
“We do not see and we’ve never seen our young people swimming in city rivers in large numbers. I just don’t buy that,” the mayor insisted.
Benepe, who helmed city parks under Mayor Mike Bloomberg from 2002 through 2012, said 500 New Yorkers died every year in waterways like the East River and Harlem River before the city’s first public pools opened in 1936.
“If you close those pools, you’re putting 50,000 kids where? On the streets?” Benepe asked in an interview with The Post on Thursday.
“They’re going to go swimming wherever they can, and they’re going to go into the river and they’re going to go into the lakes and ponds in the parks, and they’re going to open up fire hydrants.
“When 50,000 kids open up a few thousand fire hydrants, your water pressure suddenly drops and you can’t fight fires,” continued Benepe. “And the kids are playing in the streets and they’re getting hit by cars.
“So basically what you’re saying by closing pools is it’s OK if a lot of kids die.”