A trio of Baltimore City Council members plan to join union representatives on Tuesday to demand more stringent safety measures in the wake of a sanitation worker’s heat-related death Friday.

Council members Antonio Glover, Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer and Zeke Cohen will hold a news conference in front of the Department of Public Works headquarters at 9 a.m., where they are expected to join labor unions in pressing Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration to better protect workers.

Demands will include a full-time position in Baltimore’s inspector general’s office to focus on safety at the public works department; increased DPW staffing; full cooperation from Scott’s administration in City Council investigations; and an independent review of the city’s facility maintenance contracts, according to a news release from Cohen.

“It is clear that no one has done enough to prevent the tragedy of Mr. Silver’s death on Friday,” AFSCME Maryland Council 3 President Patrick Moran said in the news release. “We have been working with the Administration to address some concerns but clearly far more needs to be done.”

The public demands come in the wake of the death of Ronald Silver II, a sanitation worker who died on Friday. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on Monday confirmed his cause of death as hyperthermia.

“No one should have to wonder if it’s the last time they’ll say goodbye to their family when they leave for work, especially municipal frontline workers like Mr. Silver, who sacrifice their time and talent to make our city a better, cleaner place,” Cohen said in a statement.

And Silver’s death follows two reports from Baltimore’s Office of the Inspector General decrying working conditions at city-run sites, including the Cherry Hill sanitation yard that Silver worked out of and a facility on Bowleys Lane.

The watchdog reports found broken air conditioning, inoperable water fountains and nonfunctional ice machines at one facility, and damaged locker rooms and locked-up toilet paper at another.

Glover, who worked in the city’s solid waste division for 15 years, said there is “culture of punishment and disrespect in DPW that I experienced firsthand.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues and the administration to make DPW a good and safe place to work,” he said in a statement.

Code Red Day

On Friday, the day when Silver was working, the city’s health department had issued a Code Red heat alert, with a heat index upward of 105 degrees.

Gabrielle Avendano, 27, told WYPR that Silver knocked on her door shortly after 4 p.m. She said he fell back onto the pavement in front of her house before she called 911.

She gave him water and poured it onto him to try to cool him. He passed out a few minutes later. Avendano said she began chest compressions as emergency workers rushed to the scene.

In a statement Monday, DPW said it is committed to prioritizing the health and safety of its workers as Baltimore continues to experience extreme heat.

“We will continue to assess working conditions at all sites and make necessary adjustments to ensure a safe working environment for all employees,” the statement said.

The department also said it was pausing trash and recycling collection Tuesday and it planned to hold mandatory heat safety training sessions for employees at its Reedbird and Bowleys Lane facilities.

The training will focus on federal guidelines “for recognizing the signs and symptoms of heat stroke and related illnesses and ensure employees recognize heat stress hazards and act appropriately to address those hazards,” DPW said in an emailed statement.

AFSCME Council 3, which represents the city’s public service workers, said in a statement Monday that Silver’s death should serve as a “wake-up call” to the Department of Public Works leadership that “changes need to be put in place.”

“We are in close contact with the administration about what happened and are demanding immediate changes,” the union wrote on social media. “What’s clear is that Brother Silver and his colleagues were not guaranteed safe working conditions, a clear violation of our union contract.”

‘Nobody called for help’

On the day Silver collapsed, Avendano and her neighbor, 45-year-old Michael Cox, told WYPR they observed Silver’s co-worker in the truck on his phone.

They said they learned afterward that the co-worker was talking to a DPW supervisor and not emergency services, which is what they assumed. When she first called 911, Avendano said, she actually hung up the phone because she believed help was being summoned. Eventually, the vehicle driver joined her and Cox on the sidewalk as they administered care.

“I guess the driver had done the last round of trash pickup for Ronald, because Ronald couldn’t do it. The driver said that he thought he was just being lazy and didn’t want to work,” Avendano told the NPR affiliate. Cox confirmed hearing the driver say the same thing.

According to Avendano and Cox, the driver told them that Silver had been complaining of leg and chest pain throughout the day.

“I’m shocked and so sad that he died, because I think it could have been prevented if they had just called 911 sooner in the day,” Avendano said. “He had been complaining for most of the day about the pain that he was in, and nobody called for help except for me.”

Hyperthermia occurs when the body’s temperature climbs too high.

Extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States. Avoiding heat-heat related illness is all about prevention, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

There were 14 heat-related deaths in Maryland as of July 31, according to data published weekly by the state health department. There were nine heat-related deaths in 2023 and only five in 2022.

Silver’s Aug. 2 death is not included in that count. Six of those deaths were in Prince George’s County and three of them were in Baltimore City.

Additionally, there have been 967 emergency-room or urgent-care visits for heat-related illness so far this summer. That surpasses the total number of recorded visits of any year since at least 2019.

City officials said in a news release that they have worked through the summer to provide cooling stations at sanitation yards and provide ice, cold water and Gatorade throughout each shift to workers. Additionally, Scott’s administration has committed more than $20 million to renovate DPW facilities over the next three years after “decades” of neglect, officials said.

The Department of Public Works said employees will resume normal duties on Wednesday, and that Saturday will serve as a make-up day for trash collection. Residents can call 311 to see if they are affected by the schedule change. Mechanical street-sweeping will still take place Tuesday, officials said, and residential drop-off and landfill operations won’t be affected.

Baltimore Banner reporters Meredith Cohn and Matti Gellman contributed to this report.

WYPR is a media partner of The Baltimore Banner.

This story has been updated to correctly state the number of heat-related deaths and emergency care visits in Maryland so far this year.