Feb. 2009 -- The board of Caritas voted to close Mary Immaculate and St. Johns Hospital. Despite a public outcry and demands for emergency funding to protect the local community, by the middle of the month both hospitals had shut down their emergency rooms and stopped admitting patients.

By Feb. 28, the hospitals were both closed and all that was left were boarded up doors and graffiti-scarred wood planks.   

One message on the wood plank read: “Don't get sick in Queens.”

The closing of Mary Immaculate and St. Johns Hospital left the nearly 100,000 residents who visitedthe hospitals' emergency rooms every year searching for a new place to go for medical treatment. The closings also left some 3,000 hospital staff searching for a new place to work.