(This is a letter I sent to my local newspaper in Stamford, CT that didn't get published. I figured I'd post it here instead.) Dear editor – I almost died yesterday. I almost got crushed by a sheet of ice that fell off a building while I walked down Atlantic Street on my way to work. The sheet of ice crashed onto a piece of sidewalk that I had been walking on four seconds earlier. People around me and a crowd of people standing across the street at a bus stop, let out a collective gasp and looked up to the rooftop of the four-story building where the ice came from. Another sheet of ice hung precariously over the edge – waiting to fall. When I reached my office, I immediately found the number for the Stamford Public Safety office on the Internet and called them. I felt fortunate to be alive, but also felt it was my duty to do something about it before somebody less lucky got hurt. I reached a gentleman in the Public Safety office and reported the incident and the impending danger still hanging over unsuspecting pedestrians on the street. After doing so he said, and I quote, “That’s not our responsibility.” “Not your responsibility?” I repeated, incredulously. “The public’s ‘safety’ is not the responsibility of ‘Public Safety’?” “Well…ice on rooftops is not our responsibility,” he clarified. “The building owners are responsible for clearing the sidewalks and rooftop.” “Look,” I said. “I almost got killed a few minutes ago and I’m a little shaken up. But I don’t think it’s my responsibility to find out who owns these buildings. I’m reporting a public safety hazard to the Office of Public Safety. I’m not looking for a political discussion about ‘who’s responsibility’ it is – I’m looking for someone to spend about 10 minutes putting up a couple of traffic cones around the area, so one gets hurt or killed.” “I understand,” he said. “I’ll pass the information along to my supervisor.” I gave him the location of the falling ice and my information and hung up. At noon, I stepped outside to check and saw more ice had fallen, but no blockade or cones. At 5pm, on my way home, still no cones. As I traversed the hazardous sidewalks between Landmark Square and the train station, it occurred to me that I, along with hundreds of other commuters, have been struggling with these sidewalks for two weeks, since the last big snowstorm. There are several vacant commercial storefronts who’s owners have failed to shovel the stretch of sidewalk in front of their buildings, thus hundreds of commuting pedestrians have created a single-file footpath down these sections of sidewalks. I need to question the city of Stamford’s efforts in enforcing the rules or laws that require these owners to maintain these public walkways. As much as Public Safety likes to believe that the public is safe simply because somewhere there is a law written down that requires building owners to keep the sidewalks and rooftops safe, it doesn’t mean it’s actually happening. Building owners will not lift a finger for the public’s benefit, especially for vacant buildings, unless the city enforced the laws requiring them to do so. I know it’s difficult for non-pedestrians to sympathize with issues like these, but if you spent one morning walking from Stamford train station to the center of town, like hundreds of other people do, you would see the pitfalls and hazards we face every day, especially during this time of year. I travel this route every morning and every night, and I see people fall on the ice almost every day. One day, someone is going to break his or her neck or get crushed by a sheet of ice off a building, and the questions will be, who fault was this? And how could this have been prevented? And what exactly is the purpose of the Public Safety Office?
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