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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Metropolitan
Transportation Authority Tom Prendergast, Fire Commissioner
Daniel Nigro, and other public officials rushed to the scene
when a Long Island Rail Road train crashed into the Atlantic
Terminal in Brooklyn and left 103 people injured Wednesday
morning.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio was not there.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, the mayor
said the incident did not demand his presence.

“It’s a magnitude question,” de Blasio said.

PHOTOS: LIRR Train Crash In Brooklyn

De Blasio said he did not think the incident was as serious as,
say, the December 2013 Metro-North Railroad accident in Spuyten
Duyvil, the Bronx, in which four people died and 63 were
injured. So he went ahead instead with plans to view an exhibit
of crime photos at the Brooklyn Museum and announce a historic
drop in crime.

Kramer asked de Blasio why he did not think the LIRR derailment
was of sufficient “magnitude.”

Kramer: “I wonder if you were briefed about it, and at what
point you decided it wasn’t of the magnitude that would require
(your presence).”

De Blasio: “Yeah, I was briefed about it right after it
happened. Given that, as you heard from (NYPD) Chief (of Transit
Joseph) Fox, the most serious injury that we know of to date,
thank God, was a broken leg, that just did not, again, seem like
the kind of incident we talked about, for example, years ago
because there was a horrible tragedy.”

The Spuyten Duyvil derailment came up because at the time, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg was off playing golf in Bermuda. As mayor-
elect at the time, de Blasio made it clear he would not be that
kind of leader.

“I’ll let the current mayor speak for himself,” de Blasio told
the Wall Street Journal in a Dec. 2, 2013 issue published a day
after the Metro-North incident. “For me, it would be, generally
speaking, important to be there. I think clearly this was the
governor’s purview…. (But) my instinct in these things is to be
present even if the city is not the lead.”

On Wednesday, however, de Blasio said going to the LIRR
derailment scene was not his job.

“The Long Island Rail Road, obviously, is the purview of the
governor,” he said.

The mayor has also come under fire for skipping other events –
some more important than others – and for being out of town to
do political business.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/01/04/de-blasio-lirr-crash/

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