After the Seastreak Wall Street ferry smashed into a Lower Manhattan dock Wednesday morning, first responders rushed dozens of people who were hurt to a scattering of hospitals where nearly all were treated for minor injuries.
But one passenger suffered serious head and face trauma and had to be taken 6 miles north for treatment—past the partially operational Bellevue Hospital Center and to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on the Upper East Side.
With Bellevue, at 26th Street and First Avenue, closed to trauma patients because of damage sustained during superstorm Sandy, NewYork-Presbyterian—40 blocks north—is the hospital nearest to Lower Manhattan that can treat severe traumatic injuries requiring surgery.
That, some medical and disaster-preparedness experts say, could hamper the medical response to a Lower Manhattan incident that looked less like Wednesday’s crash and more like the one involving a Staten Island ferry in 2003 that left 11 dead and 70 injured.
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