The deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak gripping Harlem has city officials in hot water — as locals accused them Friday of dropping the ball on life-saving inspections and needlessly slow-walking revealing exactly where the disease hit.
Many outraged Harlem residents told The Post they only learned that they lived or worked in one of 10 buildings with cooling towers that tested positive for the insidious Legionnaires’-causing bacterium after the list was unveiled Thursday — weeks into the outbreak that has killed four people.
“Why weren’t these cooling towers properly maintained? Who dropped the ball and why?” raged Nichole Ingram, who fell ill with Legionnaires’ disease around July 24 after she attended a funeral service in 2239 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, one of the affected buildings.
Ingram, 53, said her son Raymond, an asthmatic 35-year-old, was still hospitalized with the flu-like, respiratory illness in New York-Presbyterian Hospital after a stay in Harlem Hospital — one of several city-owned buildings with affected cooling towers…