 You're part of the EMT response in Central Park just a quick snapshot of that of that work that you do in Central Park and how This has changed with the park becoming a hospital essentially So yes We have the Central Park medical units of volunteer ambulance service that operates for the most part strictly within Central Park Central Park is visited by 42 million visitors every year. So it's a huge amount when you have That number of visitors or that number of people things will happen, you know, a lot of people playing sports a lot of people riding bikes People will have heart attacks. They get sick. They fall off their bikes So there's really a need to have a frontline emergency medical service where people are very familiar with Locations in the park whereas at times The outside EMS agencies who were around the park really don't know exactly where to go what you say Listen, I'm at the fountain. I'm at the Cherry Hill. I'm at the Alaska ring And that doesn't come, you know compute well with the city computer systems or the Cruise from the outside the park. So we know the park inside and out So Right now a lot of people who are told to stay indoors still need to go outside and exercise And you know one of the places they go is Central Park Central Park is Still pretty busy right now and you would say to yourself Well, it should be empty. I mean if you look at Times Square Times Square looks like a ghost town But Central Park is still pretty populated During the day because people are climbing the walls in their apartments And they go out for a little recreation a little exercise. So, you know, we're still covering the park and Sadly, you know, a lot of people are getting sick from this COVID-19 virus And the city You know, it's it's been an upward spiral of cases And the normal volume in new york city for ambulance cases is in the area of the low four thousands That's been going up steadily and You're now past seven thousand I think like two days ago with 7200 And that's putting a vast strain on our resources. So We have been asked to you know, help the city's fire department EMS They put out a call for mutual aid And we are covering with them The rest of the city in addition to covering central park So we have gone outside of the park. We're covering You know, everywhere we've gone Out to Uptown Manhattan. You've gone out to the Bronx. We're going just about everywhere because Um, the resources are stretched pretty thin and I just understood today That FEMA has requested yet more ambulance services from out of state to come into new york to help Not so much with the 9-1-1 calls but the transports from out of the hospitals to places like the navy ship and the javits center and I'm not really sure how they're going to get people into the central park hospital either but maybe with that as well And are those hospitals the navy ship and javits center and central park starting to fill up with patients So I think the central park hospital is not yet open. It should be open in a day or two And I can't really tell you about the javits center. I don't think they're ready yet either. I think they're gearing up I think we're supposed to peak here in new york city in about um a week 10 days Maybe two weeks closer to 10 days to two weeks In terms of patient loads I'll tell you it's very sad when you go into an emergency room And you know if you're not really sick If you're in a panic mode, you should really stay away From the emergency rooms. It's not the place to go unless you are sick Mind you if you are sick if you have a fever if you Have trouble breathing you need to call 9-1-1 before it's too late. You don't want to wait On something like that, but at the on the other side of the token You know if you're just having general malaise or if you have anxiety You shouldn't be calling 9-1-1 because you're straining the resources even further And you really don't want to end up going to the emergency room where there are lots and lots of very sick people And if you're not sick and you go there the chances are you might get sick And are there some hospitals that are less stressed than others or is it true of every hospital in the new york metro area? Well, I can't really say in terms of you know, I haven't seen every hospital So I can't tell you firsthand I can tell you of the hospitals that we hear from they're all pretty stressed Um, you know, it's pretty sad when you think about um, and you know, we are hearing that Every hospital has now from the city of new york a tractor trailer Which is those huge trailers um refrigerated trailers for Storage of dead bodies That's a scary thought and you know from what I understand those trailers are being filled So, you know, they're being taken away and replaced with new empty trailers So I think that's kind of an inkling that you know, things are bad here and they're bad everywhere and You know slowly but surely the city of new york has been decreasing in the number of hospitals over the number of years And of course, there are a number of different causes for that. You know, some people say it's the medic aid Spending has forced some hospitals to close So it's financial stress on the system And yes, there have been a number of hospitals to close and I really don't want to get into the reasons for them closing But we don't have the number of hospital beds that we used to have 20 years ago Yeah, so as a result. Yes, we are stressed here in the city of new york and I would assume the rest of the state as well So you had said that the frequency of The ambulance trips are now there's 45 minute waits for emt response and they've changed the staffing levels Can you say something about that? you know Yes, uh, to some degree that that's very true what what is happening is that Sadly the ems crews are overworked They too are getting sick And when they get sick, you know, they have to stay home because they're contagious So there's a shortage of paramedics. There's a shortage of emt's and in new york city The ambulance crews, you know, are two tiers. They have a paramedic ambulance and they have a basic life support Which is an emt ambulance The paramedic ambulances are staffed by two paramedics And that's the way we have paramedic ambulances The basic life support ambulances are staffed by two emt's So because of the shortages The staffing has changed And we now have one paramedic and one emt And on the basic life support, we have one certified first responder and one emt on those ambulances. So Yes, uh, you know in the back where we used to have two paramedics giving care. We now have one paramedic Uh and the same, you know, as far as the basic life support, we have one emt giving care as opposed to two And so as a person with a lot of experience in an ambulance with your co-workers Is that sufficient? Is that concern you? well You know, obviously, uh, we run under ideal situations in terms of the larger view Um and two paramedics is always great. And when you have a very serious case Yes, two paramedics is needed And when you only have one, you know, you have to make do with what you have that's the rule that we go by um With central park medical unit, we are still running with uh two emt's So we are not changing our guidelines. Unfortunately, we have a small army of emt's volunteers that we can do that Um, we are also a teaching unit. So, you know, a lot of our members come to us to gain experience And as a result, sometimes we run, um, two or three members We try to cut down during the situation of COVID-19 virus So we try to run just two emt's at a time as opposed to normally where we run three sometimes even four So that our younger newer members can gain experience But we really don't want to expose them to The virus so we're trying to cut down in numbers, but we have at least two emt's at minimum staffing our ambulances still So what's the mood in the city? You have two two hats. One is the central park medical unit. You also have your own business You're working with customers. What's the mood of the city So, you know, as I said before new york city is a ghost town a lot of people are very scared rightfully so Then you have those that are fairly laxadaisical, you know, you have a lot of young people who um throw caution to the wind and you know, it's it's very hard to Explain reason to them and say listen you need to keep your distance You don't really understand what happens when you don't keep your distance And where do you see a lot of a lot of these folks? You see them on buses and especially subways So the mta, which is the metropolitan transportation Authority has cut down on the number of Subways being run So they're running less frequently and as a result there are more people in them So of course if you go to youtube and you you know, look at the recent subway runs You'll see a lot more people on a subway and of course they're all over each other. They're very close There's no such thing as social distancing on these Subway cars and as a result, what do you have? You have you know, all you need is one person who has the virus in there and everybody's going to get it I mean, yes, some people have gloves on and some people have masks on and good for them You know, hopefully they won't get it But there are a lot of people who don't have any protection whatsoever And guess what that's really a person at risk And even if you're young It's not a good idea You know, you're gonna that virus goes on your clothes. You go to your office. You go to your home. You spread it around Terrible terrible situation Um, and again, you know, people are still hanging out on the street Um, you know going to social events, which they should not be doing You know, you need to use a little more common sense in terms of what you're doing in your personal life Um, I know that most businesses have shut down a lot of You know, uh, I would say 90 percent of the people, uh, if they're still working, they're working from home Which is great So, you know, you're isolating yourself so that we can just bend this curve all the way down, which is truly necessary And please I beg of everybody Do not go out stay home You know, if you need to go out for a little exercise, that's fine But keep your distance from other people If you see a jogger running on the sidewalk avoid them Because when they pass by the sweat's going to dump right on to you, you know And if you're not wearing a mask, uh, you know, all of that sweat's going to go all over you So if they happen to be contagious, you don't want that anywhere near you Just please be careful So rafael, you said that you Were involved in 9 11 What was the role that you played there? So Uh during september 11. Sadly, there were quite a number of people who were injured Uh when the buildings came down and even before Um, I was also involved in 1993 bombing of the world trade center. So during um 1993 bombing of the world trade center Uh, we brought our ambulance down to vc street and as the people were coming down out of the building, uh We parked our ambulance on vc street and they came out Um, you know, they were all suffering from smoke inhalation and we put them in the ambulance gave them oxygen therapy and brought them Um to the hospital So it was a big round trip, you know going back and forth to the hospital delivering them to the hospital And the ambulance was full at that point in time. So, um, we had planned on doing the same thing during september 11th and going down to You know vc street and you know that morning when it was election day As I recall or something like that. I maybe it was primary day. Don't recall exactly But I dropped my kids at school and I got in my car and I heard over the radio And I heard a park ranger actually and I was a park ranger That's how I met my wife. We were both park rangers Like I heard her screaming over the radio, which is something I never usually do That a plane went into the world trade center and the dispatcher was Very surprised and said you mean a small plane and the the poor park ranger was hysterical And once I heard that I said something isn't right here Because they're not answering. So I went upstairs. I got my uniform. I responded to The place where we have our garage. I got the ambulance and we went to the our station house Um, we're a crew had gathered and we had two ambulances at that point. I got one and we went down to fabric To the world trade center There was a gentleman who was riding his bike down to the avenue and When the second plane hit he had turned around and wasn't looking where he was going he fell off the bike and To break his fall he stuck his hands out and when he fell He had an open compound fracture of his arm. So his bones were sticking out of his arm We actually stopped to pick him up um, that man saved my life because I would have gone straight down to vc street and then the buildings would have fallen on me So I the man doesn't know that but i'm very grateful to him because He slowed me down enough so that I wouldn't have been there when the buildings fell Anyway, we took him to the hospital and then we went down to the world trade center and Um, by the time we got down there it was pitch black It was like it was nighttime worse than nighttime because You know here in new york city There's always street lights and you can see something you can see rather well At that point in time you could see nothing you can see the hand in front of you It's just really entirely black So, um staying very close. We were on in broadway at that point in time Near just in front of the world trade center. What was a world trade center in total disbelief? Gathering some of the victims who had managed to crawl away And we just you know again started our round trips to belview hospital Removing some of the injured and we did that Mostly all day until about two o'clock when there were no more people who were injured everyone had been removed for the most part and So, you know that that's really the sad part. There was no one else to help um, and I mean that in you know in a way that It was so strange to us that we couldn't help anyone Um, you know everyone else was dead Which we really couldn't fathom it was so sad to us That we couldn't help anyone We were we were all deeply affected by that That here we are and we're ready to help them and we couldn't help anyone It was a terrible feeling So we went back to the rest of the city. We went uptown where the calls were still coming in We're still getting sick and I guess it was still a shortage of addresses And we helped out there where we could with the regular 911, uh load of calls and uh at some point went home I remember finally getting home that evening My kids were we're home and they were little at the time of my wife and I was covered in white dust And uh, I took my clothes off took a shower I watched about two minutes of tv and I just went to sleep So that's my 9-11 story Had how thank you for Telling that This seems Epic in the same way maybe even possibly bigger That's COVID-19 So, you know, I think every, um Disaster every You know situation like this are all different I don't really think you can compare one to another Like pearl harbor can't be compared to the world trade center and kovat 19 can't be compared to pearl harbor This particular instance of the virus Um sadly is going to be here much longer And the patient count is much higher than, uh You know the world trade center and pearl harbor When people will still continue to get sick after tomorrow After, you know, so a week has gone by two weeks have gone by You know projecting to the next week or two people are still going to get sick. You're still going to die And I think that's what's really frightening and You know, we can guess and and I think the authorities might be able to pinpoint this certainly much better than I can because I cannot Um, but what frightens me is that we don't know or I don't know when this is going to end So, you know, when is our life going to be able to get back to normal? We want normalcy I mean when you think about the economy and it's coming to a standstill For the most part and you know, the government says well, we're going to give a stimulus We're going to help out here. We're going to give people checks there We don't I mean for me personally, I don't want that. I want to go back to work. I want to get my life back to normal I really don't want to hand out. I want to make my own living and Go back to work and do the things that I love to do So that's that's really I think what's different about this particular situation The desire to go back to normalcy, but yes, you're right. This is something of a magnitude that is Certainly different and a lot scarier to some degree Because it will be with us And you know, certainly the world trade center the economic consequences of that were with us for quite some time as well So what do you tell your colleagues in the unit about the long haul of this? Well, we you know fortunately we have a lot of members and we don't want them to get burned out So we deliberately You know try to keep them We don't want them to do 16 hours at a time we want them to have a day off in between You don't want them to get burned out so we stagger them and as much as they are very willing to Perform for 16 hours and come back the next day with little to no rest We won't allow it So we want to preserve them We want them to go home get some rest get something to eat take it easy Take off take a day off before they come back They need to preserve their energy. They need to keep their resistance up They need to take care of themselves, you know in EMS we have Saying that you know you have to take care of number one Which is yourself You have to take care of your partner and then you have to take care of your patient So certainly you have always always have to take care of yourself because then if you don't you can't take care of anybody Exactly Well, I want to thank you so much for your time. I know you're busy You know, there's a lot going on and your your service to the community is Outstanding as is your wife your wife. She's incident commander for the vna, right? Isn't that true visiting nurse service of new york? Yes, incident commander. She's doing a great job protecting the elderly of new york the most defenseless populations of Of the city Yes, and oh by the way, I just have to mention that our service is free It's been free since 1975 to all of our patients So you don't get a bill once you've been delivered to the hospital Absolutely not totally free and and you know for some people that really makes a difference Whether or not they're going to go to hospital because they're scared. You said no, I'm not going with you I'll you know, I'm just going to go home because I don't want to have to pay for a bill It's no no, we're free. It's you know, you don't have to worry about a bill from us because You know ambulance bills sometimes average out to be over a thousand dollars, you know Expensive to take an ambulance ride And is that because you're funded by contributions and volunteer labor? Well, the the volunteer labor certainly helps. I mean, uh, yes, we are funded by donations We exist solely on the account of the generosity of others Um, we don't receive any government funding. So yes, we exist on the generosity of people Who you know make nice donations to us and you get a lot of little donations which make a huge difference for us Um, and and yes, that's that's entirely true I want to thank you so much ray for being with us It's just a pleasure to see you and thank you for your time. Thank you Great seeing you as well all the best Same to you. Okay. Bye. Bye