LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY: Order to Clean Towers Strains Crews Amid Legionnaires’ Outbreak in Bronx. “The sweeping order was cast as a pre-emptive strike against Legionnaires’, which has claimed 12 lives and sickened more than 120 people in the South Bronx, the worst flare-up of the disease in the city’s history. People can contract the illness by inhaling contaminated mist from a cooling tower or another water source.”