Chilling effect

Hit by ice from hotel, dissed by 911: tourist suit

AN ITALIAN tourist did not have the luck of the Irish on her side during her first trip to New York when she was hit in the head with a chunk of ice, according to a new lawsuit.

Tarsilla Baglivo, 57, was walking hand in hand with her husband outside the famed Plaza hotel on Fifth Ave. at Central Park South when the block of ice plummeted and left her with six staples in her head on St. Patrick’s Day, the suit alleges.

Baglivo and her husband were in town for a week and were on their way to meet their daughter at Columbus Circle for shopping when she was injured.

“I took a left by the corner and while walking, there were other people there,” Baglivo told the Daily News from her home in Tricase in southern Italy.

“That’s when I felt this hit, a very strong hit, and thought it was something violent.”

As she fell, she grasped her husband’s arm and realized what she felt was ice.

“I still am scared,” she said. “If I hit my head, it still hurts. But we go ahead.”

The couple walked away from Fifth Ave., which was shut down for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and went to a CVS at 57th St. and Eighth Ave.

The drugstore’s manager tried to reach 911 three times, but couldn’t get through, according to Baglivo’s lawsuit.

An ambulance took too long to arrive because of an overload of calls on the rowdy holiday, Baglivo (photo inset) claims. She says she was forced to walk to Mount Sinai West hospital after waiting 90 minutes.

“We were waiting so long we were thinking about getting a taxi. It was a serious problem,” said Baglivo’s daughter Alessandra Accogli, 32. “My father said we had to go to the hospital because he was worried about internal bleeding.”

“She felt terrible,” Accogli said. “Even now, she is scared to walk near walls.”

An FDNY spokesman said the initial report at 1:11 p.m. was for a noncritical injury. The day was busy and the department held the job until a paramedic unit was available, he said.

Accogli went to The Plaza the next day and showed a manager photos of her injured mother.

“He said nothing,” she recalled. “I said how irresponsible because you’re not telling people to be careful because of the ice. We were lucky because it hit her on the side and not straight on the head.”

Baglivo’s attorney says the hotel was aware of the problem, and put a barely visible sign outside to warn of the potential of falling ice.

“It is shocking that The Plaza did not take the necessary steps to remove the dangerous condition, but instead taped a piece of paper, obscured to pedestrians, on a traffic pole as though this was adequate to warn of this potentially deadly condition,” said the lawyer, Peter Gleason.

A rep for The Plaza did not immediately return phone calls.