Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s handling of the deep freeze left 18 people dead and exposed gaps between promises and results in New York City’s emergency response.

“It’s actually colder today in New York City than in parts of Antarctica,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Sunday as the deep freeze tightened its grip, and on Saturday another body was found frozen on city streets, bringing the death toll to 18 with wind chills below zero and temperatures feeling like negative 10.

Eighteen dead. That is not an abstract tally; it is the clearest test of civic competence. When weather turns lethal, government’s basic duty is straightforward: find the vulnerable, move them indoors, and do it quickly enough that they survive.

The mayor said the administration mounted a “full all-hands-on-deck approach,” and officials urged New Yorkers to call 311 if they spotted someone in need. City Hall also announced it had expanded emergency capacity with around 60 new hotel shelter units and more warming centers, bringing the total to nearly 65 facilities citywide.

Those announcements sounded like action, but the real measure is outcomes. Lives are not saved by press conferences or photo ops; they are saved by timely, effective boots-on-the-ground response and solid dispatch systems that close the loop on reports.

The response on the ground tells a different story. During the freeze, 96% of 311 calls about homeless people reportedly led to no tangible help, and of 1,183 calls, outreach teams could not find the person in 72% of cases while another 250 times the person “refused help.”

The city initially only routed 311 calls to 911 during overnight “Code Blue” hours, then shifted full responsibility to 911 on January 31—almost two weeks after the freeze set in. That timeline points to a catastrophic gap in real-time decision making and triage during an emergency.

Translation: the system failed to turn reports into rescues. Bad dispatch practices, weak location protocols, and a habit of treating “refused help” as a closed case left people exposed to lethal temperatures instead of getting them into care.

Mamdani treats involuntary transport like radioactive waste, calling it a “last resort” even as bodies pile up. The legal framework is permissive for emergencies: New York’s Mental Hygiene Law allows emergency removal for psychiatric evaluation when there’s reasonable cause to believe someone is mentally ill and acting in a way “likely to result in serious harm”—including substantial risk of harm to themselves.

State guidance makes the point bluntly that “serious harm” includes people whose mental illness leaves them unable to meet basic needs like shelter or medical care—even without recent violence or self-harm. In subzero wind chills, that description isn’t academic; exposure is lethal and impaired judgment can mean a person lacks the capacity to protect themselves.

Columnist Michael Goodwin called Mamdani “NYC’s Mr. Freeze” and accused the mayor of hiding behind legalism instead of using tools other leaders have used to prevent deaths. That line stings because it captures a pattern: legal caution and public statements replacing urgent action when temperature and timelines demand it.

If the city expects the public to use 311 as its eyes and ears, it has to show what happens after a call is logged. Publish the after-action report: how many calls, how many teams dispatched, how many contacts made, how many transports completed, and how many reports fizzled into the bureaucratic void.

Fix the intake process, train operators to collect precise locations, coordinate instantly with first responders, and treat every failed contact as a system breakdown that requires correction. Competent government is accountable, measurable, and relentless about closing critical gaps when human lives are at stake.

New York can have all the rhetoric about compassion and big programs, but winter does not negotiate. If City Hall cannot keep people alive in February, voters should ask whether that administration is fit for bigger responsibilities. The freeze exposed the truth: big-government socialists can’t even handle the basics.