"Have You Spoken To Code Enforcement About It?"

I imagine that I'm not the only Hudson resident who occasionally wonders how frequently people fall on our obscenely dangerous sidewalks, especially this time of the year and especially this winter with all the bouts of rain, sleet and snowfall, along with the thawing and freezing, that have created so many ICY, SLIPPERY, DANGEROUS SURFACES TO WALK ON.  Recently and for at least the next few very cold nights and days, following snow and rain, the situation on our sidewalks is and will continue to be horrendous!  Combine ice with horribly neglected sidewalks and sidewalks made of non-compliant materials and you have a true shitshow, a more dangerous situation which can more readily and easily injure and kill -- a situation that City Hall doesn't do a thing about year after year after year.  Well, they do TALK a lot about it, don't they?

About a week ago, I fantasized about acquiring a list of every person who has ever fallen on a Hudson sidewalk in the past few years who has required medical attention at CMH. That, of course, will never find its way to HUDseen and, anyway, it would only be half the picture since so many people trip (or slide) and fall but do not seek or need medical attention (count me among that group!).  But I'm thinking that the number of people falling on our sidewalks is a whole lot more than anyone can imagine, and I also think that it is not out of the realm of possibilities to have City Hall offer at least a partial picture of the actual physical damage our sidewalks are inflicting on us, even if it's not in the form of a list from CMH.

Couldn't Greenport EMS and our Hudson Police Department keep a log of every fallen pedestrian in Hudson to whom they respond to?  I think that's a great idea, and I also think that if Mishanda Franklin included the number of pedestrian sidewalk victims in her monthly HPD report to the council (which she could very easily do if she were asked to!) that there would be an immediate outcry from residents for City Hall to stop yacking about fixing and replacing our sidewalks -- ESPECIALLY THE WORST ONES and ESPECIALLY THOSE MADE OF ANYTHING BESIDES CONCRETE -- and get Code Enforcement to finally start enforcing the sidewalk code rules they are supposed to be enforcing.  

What I came across on Saturday afternoon on Court Street just might kickstart one smart council member (if there are any) into demanding of Mishanda Franklin that her monthly HPD report include the number of pedestrian sidewalk victims that produced a call to 911 or directly to HPD.  If I had become a council member in 2024, I would have requested this of our police chief by now.

Things are spiraling out of control as we wait for the hastily created and slow-as-molasses Public Works Board to get something done about our sidewalks.  Code Enforcement is also waiting for the PWB to get something done, all the while people are slipping, tripping and falling on our sidewalks (or trying their best not to).

If you have the time, one way to get an idea of how bad our sidewalks are is to approach every Greenport EMS ambulance and Hudson patrol vehicle you see parked on a city street, their flashing lights assisting your search.  Respond to the responders, if you will.

That is what I did this past Saturday at 4pm, about 15 minutes after heavy, wet snowflakes began falling.  When I arrived to the intersection of East Court Street and East Allen Street after having noticed flashing ambulance lights from 2 blocks away on Warren Street, there was an elderly man lying on his side on the sidewalk with his hat in the middle of the sidewalk a few feet away, his hand to his head and two people tending to him, one of them a Greenport EMS responder (Hudson does not have its own ambulance or EMS crew).  The victim was conscious and talking, but he was not going to be able to get up on his own, and the helpers were not in a rush to lift him.  I didn't see any blood.  As soon as I stepped on the sidewalk, I knew what the problem was.  But I didn't know the half of it, it turns out!

About a minute after arriving, I heard the EMS responder tell the stranger/passer by assisting him that "we had her in the ambulance no more than a few minutes, and then this guy fell.  We didn't even have time to get her vitals."

In disbelief, I asked the responder if I had heard him right about another victim already being in the ambulance.  He nodded.  "Yup." 

"She fell right here, too, but they weren't walking together?" I asked.

"No, they fell a few minutes apart in the same spot."  

"How is she?" I asked, pointing at the ambulance.

"Oh, she's okay. She hit her head too, but not too bad."

That's right, when I arrived there was a woman already in the ambulance who had been brought there after falling moments earlier on the same flagstone as victim number two!!!!  Naturally, I had assumed that the ambulance had responded for the victim on the sidewalk with his hand on his head, not someone else who had already fallen.  For a few seconds, I had a difficult time processing things -- one of those surreal moments.  Here was Hudson's problem in the proverbial nutshell, the problem everyone talks about but no one does anything about, right in front of me.  Had I arrived earlier and stuck around long enough, I may have seen the woman lifted from the sidewalk and rolled to the ambulance by EMS, AND THEN SEEN VICTIM 2 FALL ON THE SAME FLAGSTONE AND ALSO HIT HIS HEAD ON THE SAME OBSCENELY SLIPPERY STONE.  Do you see how fucked up, unwalkable and unlivable our lack of Code Enforcement has made this city?

Flagstones.  Acceptable sidewalk material anywhere
in Hudson other than on Warren Street!

 

This is an absolutely disgraceful, dangerous fucking mess
that the city allows!  All the slippery as ice stones are
cracked or broken and uneven, right up to the curb. 
Notice the red ADA curb pad on the right, installed on a
flagstone by the city! A stamp of approval!

A little harder hit to the head and he's dead!

The victim was helped to his feet and led to the stairs of the building where he sat to wait, still with his hand to his head the entire time.  The second ambulance soon pulled up and two workers got out to set up their stretcher on the sidewalk, struggling to not slip and fall.  The original responder soon pointed out to his colleagues where the two people had fallen and hit their heads.  It was like in the cartoons.  With his foot, he pointed to the cleared area near the center of the stone.  "She fell there."  Then, without moving his torso, he moved his foot a bit to the right to point at the second blotchy clearing on the flagstone, this one close to the short, spiky iron fence adjacent to the flagstone sidewalk in the yard of the building.  "And he fell there."

The woman fell on the left, the man on the right, within minutes!

Two flagstone sidewalk victims, two ambulances.

You get what you ask for, Hudson City Hall.
And you just may get sued for these two falls!

The male victim made it to his stretcher, the second stretcher within minutes needed for someone else falling on the sidewalk in front of the same property who also slammed their head on the flagstone sidewalk, nearly killing two humans with one (flag)stone.

The entire half block there, Partition Alley to Allen Street, is a sidewalk made of uneven old flagstones, as if the property owners (and City Hall) don't care what the fuck happens to anybody out front or how a fall might affect the remainder of someone's life.  The flagstones make for an attractive sidewalk, that is, until you have to walk on them and especially when they are wet.  I don't know how old victim number one was, but it should come as no surprise that the male victim was elderly.  Apparently, they were both either coming or going from the church service a few hundred feet away across Allen Street.

A sidewalk made of any material other than concrete is known --plain and simple -- as a code violation, and this has probably been true for decades.  But you wouldn't know it by walking on the east side of East Court Street and elsewhere in town, now would you?  No, flagstones are not a code violation -- they simply make a mockery of our code, our useless and powerless mayor and the folks who are supposed to enforce the code.  And these allowed violations continue to injure, sometimes twice within minutes! 

A concrete sidewalk surface, if done correctly. has some grit and texture to it.  Flagstones do not.  Other than removing them, there is nothing you can do to make flagstones safe for pedestrians, especially the old ones that have become an uneven, damaged mess. With the light, wet snow yesterday, each stone, even the fairly level ones, were like ice.  There was zero traction, and I'm not kidding, it was like being on a frozen pond with a bit of snow on it.  I did not feel safe, and the responder had to have slipped five times while I was there for 6 minutes, though he did not fall.  The entire sidewalk was frighteningly slippery, the worst that Hudson had to offer.  One of the steepest stones at the scene had a large frozen puddle of water at its bottom, a foot or two from where the women fell.  The responder laid a medium-sized white towel over it in an attempt to prevent anyone from stepping on it.  He told a cohort, "I just called HPD to bring some salt because church is going to be over soon and more people will be headed this way."  He actually said this!

We can't accept this anymore!  We can't accept Code Enforcement to continue to not enforce the sidewalk code (and for the mayor to continue to accept this) just because the PWB is "working on it" while we wait for the city's largest public infrastructure project ever that may not come for years, if it ever does.  Those two people could have easily died on the sidewalk on Saturday, on flagstones waiting to finally kill someone with a hard crack to the head.  

The saddest, most telling thing of all is that even if someone had ever complained to our Code Enforcement Office or a mayor about those flagstones - even a hundred warnings and complaints -- nobody would have done a damn thing about FORCING THE PROPERTY OWNERS ON EAST COURT STREET TO REPLACE THEIR FLAGSTONE SIDEWALKS WITH CONCRETE.  (Will they now, though?).  But why waste your fucking time complaining to the city about a code violation that might kill someone or put them in an ambulance and then a hospital in the blink of an eye (if their brain is still functioning well enough to blink an eye)?  How about two head trauma deaths on the same day within minutes of one another on the same fucking slippery-as-ice wet-with-snow sidewalk code violation flagstone in the year 2025 in Hudson, NY?   How about just two people who won't feel the same for the rest of their lives, where everything is foggy all the time?  How about just another broken bone or two -- for both of them!  Why not throw in a broken hip or two while we're at it!  Let's face it, if someone is fortunate enough to survive a quick fall to stone-hard ground, Hudson City Hall doesn't care what the injuries are how severe they are, or if that person (or people!) will ever enjoy life again. 

The first of Saturday's flagstone victims, 
off to the hospital for a visit and examination, 
perhaps more.  Did she survive her injury to the head?
Who do you suppose pays for that visit and the $3,000
ambulance ride?

What do you suppose Kamal Johnson would have to say about a sidewalk code violation that CEO has been ignoring (and accepting of) for decades that finally ruined, or ended, someone's life or just broke a bone or two, including possibly a hip?  Absolutely nothing, probably.  No, no -- I know exactly what he would say:  "Have you spoken to Code Enforcement about it?"  And he would think the whole thing was hilarious, just like the children's cartoons he probably still loves to watch on television so much.

"My mother and father died falling on a sidewalk
in Hudson. Does anyone know of a good 
local lawyer there?"

Every fucking year, every fucking snowfall,
one inch to one foot.  They never clear the 
snow and ice!  Code Enforcement? Say what?
There is no such thing! 
When the "sidewalk district" solution finally
 wraps up in the year 2525, will Code Enforcement
continue to do little to nothing about our lovely
safe new sidewalks covered in snow and ice?