Hypothermia and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Cases Soar in City After Hurricane

Summary:

1. Number of cold-exposure cases in NY area tripled in weeks after Sandy than any recent weeks.
2. Most of NY's power has been restored, still few thousand living in cold.
3. Department warned heath care providers that living in unheated homes can "cause illness and death".
4. This shows how unprepared and shocking NY area was hit by Sandy.

Opinion:

            I'm sure that we have all heard about Hurricane Sandy, but the magnitude of the hurricane cannot be accurately acknowledged up in The Great White North because we had no sever impacts like the Eastern US did. More specifically, in this particular storm, the NY area was schocked and unprepared for this massive storm and many were found dead or ill. Even up to this day, there are still many thousands that are living in the cold and could suffer from hypothermia, and even the people that are back in their homes have a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

            To put this into perspective, one astonishing fact about this storm is that the amount of cold-exposure cases TRIPLED, not doubled, but tripled than any other weeks in decades. Imagine all of a sudden you go from a nice warm apartment to cold, wet and stormy conditions that could kill you or sicken you with hypothermia. But that's not even the only main concern here, the amount of carbon monoxide poisoning has gone up significantly as well because of this storm. The amount of carbon monoxide poisonings were 10x as high than they were expecting during the week of the storm and 6x as high the following week.

            As you can see, this may have not affected us in the friendly confines of Aurora, ON, but in New York, they were hit, and were hit hard.

Nick Bell