NYC returning to normal after the blizzard

NYC finally returning to normal after the blizzard

A few minutes after a snowplow finally cleared his Brooklyn street, Vinnie Corollo fired up his SUV for the first time in four days.

His first trip would be to the grocery store, he said. And then he was starting a delayed vacation.

“I’m going to Florida,” the 58-year-old said. “Enough of this.” The sentiment was echoed across New York as the city continued to dig out from a Christmas weekend blizzard and the anger over the response persisted.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that every city street had been plowed at least once as he visited some of the hardest-hit areas, which dumped 20 inches in some parts of the city. But it was too little too late for some residents.

Alexander Lisitsyn of Brooklyn, whose street was finally cleared Thursday, said it was the first time he saw such a failure in the 19 years he’s lived in the U.S. The civil engineer said he was only able to get to work because he had happened to park on a main street several blocks away. But when he got to his workplace near the Whitestone Bridge, it took him an hour to find a spot to park and another hour to shovel out a spot.

“My friend lives in New Jersey and his street is perfectly clear. Three million people living in Brooklyn and look at this situation. The mayor doesn’t care about us.” Other streets were still coated in snow or unplowed after the mayor’s comments.

As he did earlier in the week, Bloomberg promised to investigate what went wrong. But he denied budget cuts had anything to do with the city’s sluggish response. And while he said he would investigate persistent rumors that snowplow operators staged a slowdown during the storm, he said there was no evidence of such a protest.

Meanwhile, the metropolitan area’s three main airports were almost back to normal, with only a few stranded passengers remaining. And for the first time since the storm hit, the city’s hundreds of subway stations were all up and running Thursday — the day a fare increase took effect. The last of some 600 stuck buses had been cleared, as had most of the abandoned cars, the mayor said.

Bloomberg — a media mogul who has built a reputation as an able manager, adept at cutting through bureaucracy — defended the city’s response to the blizzard earlier in the week but adopted a more conciliatory tone over the past few days as complaints of stuck ambulances and unplowed streets mounted.

“The response to the snowstorm was inadequate and unacceptable,” he conceded Thursday. “Nobody is satisfied. We’re accountable. I’m accountable.” The storm struck on Sunday in a city that has been planning to slash spending. But the mayor said: “The budget had nothing to do with this. We thought we had an adequate number of people, an adequate amount of equipment and the right training.” About 100 Department of Sanitation supervisors in charge of coordinating the plowing fleet are scheduled to be demoted this weekend. That ignited speculation that disgruntled supervisors had sabotaged the snow removal effort in revenge. The heads of the two unions that represent sanitation workers said the rumors were false and insulting.

The mayor said the city had made good on a promise to plow practically every street by Thursday morning — though some will need more plowing to remove all the snow, and abandoned cars were in the way on a few blocks.

Around the city, banks of plowed snow still made crossing some streets tricky. But for many, things were closing in on normal. Connie Sigona, 62, of Bensonhurst whooped as a dump truck with a snow plow finally rumbled down her street.

The snow plow suddenly stopped in front of Sigona’s house.

“We just got a call — we’re only supposed to plow half of your street!” A worker in the passenger seat shouted, smiling.
“Oh no you don’t!” Sigona shouted.

The worker laughed: “Just joking!” And the plow continued on.

Sigona shook her head, relieved, and began calling her oil company to order a much-needed delivery.