Mayor Bloomberg under fire for handling of blizzard

[tanyar23]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101229/us_nm/us_usa_weather

Seems to me that when a city deals with inclement weather (the definition of inclement varies, I know) and doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with it, that the mayor is blamed. Seems like an oddly familiar story somehow.

I’m still of the mind that a four letter s word happens. Yep, snow happens.

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[flowerpetal]

And Mayor Bloomberg did the right thing this morning by accepting responsibility and eating a little crow. Too bad Greg Nickels hadn’t learned this lesson. In retrospect, I believe we would have been in a better position (on many fronts) if he were still mayor.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013800375_apuswinterweather.html

I agree Tanyar23. When you can’t blame God/Goddess for the weather… find someone you can point the finger at.

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[cjboffoli]

They’re calling it “Bloomberg’s Katrina.” And we’re talking about a mayor who is so popular that the City threw out mayoral term limits to reelect him a third time. However, there may be more to the story. The NY Post is reporting that sanitation workers deliberately sabotaged the snow removal plan in retaliation for cuts Bloomberg made to their staffing/budget. As a former Manhattanite, I’ll be curious to see how the story plays out.

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[Sue]

Did you see the video of sanitation workers destroying someone’s car while trying to get it unstuck from the NY blizzard? A bit of profanity in it, if you’re sensitive to that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt_r-jO3lKE

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[dawsonct]

I LOVE NEW YORK!!

New Yorkers, that is.

—

The Yankees? Not so much.

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[cjboffoli]

Sue: I did see that video. I thought the guy filming it was sort of a jerk though. I mean, he wasn’t really helping the situation by screaming insults down from his window. The city employees were doing what they could in the midst of a bad situation. Besides, anyone who lives in NYC and decides they need to own an SUV and park it on the street deserves to have it scraped up by a front-end loader :-)

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[KBear]

Heckuva job, Bloomie!

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[hooper1961]

flowerpetal – and i thought i would not miss nickels but i do.

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[waterworld]

I’m posting this from New York city (86th and Columbus), where my husband, my mother and I have been stranded since the blizzard. We had tickets for a flight out on Tuesday after the storm, but it was cancelled, along with hundreds of other flights. The next available flight was Monday, January 3. To get home to WS a little sooner, we are taking a train down to Washington DC tomorrow and getting on a flight there.

We haven’t watched a lot of the news, but I can tell you this storm was nothing like any snowstorm I’ve ever seen in Seattle. It was the sixth heaviest snowfall ever recorded here in Manhattan. I can appreciate that things wouldn’t all go according to plan, considering the volume and the wind. Nonetheless, it makes no sense that the mayor’s office didn’t declare a snow emergency on Christmas day, when the storm was bearing down and the National Weather Service was predicting at least 11 to 16 inches in Manhattan, more elsewhere. That at least would have cleared out the major, most critical thoroughfares. If there’s an issue with the sanitation workers, I haven’t seen it. They’ve been out plowing constantly and anywhere they can get to, so far as I can tell. They claim that a major reason they haven’t gotten to many side streets in the outer boroughs is that there were cars abandoned in the streets. (They didn’t get Hooper’s memo, I guess.)

It’s been amazing to see how the city was brought to it’s knees for a couple days: impassible snow berms everywhere, subway stations rendered inaccessible by mountains of snow, subway trains frozen in time due to snow on the rails, cars completely buried in drifts and plowed snow. Thankfully, none of us has had a health emergency; if you’ve read the stories in the NY Times, you’ll know that some people did not get medical help in time, because of the snow. It’s been a real adventure, and I’m grateful we have been safe and warm throughout.

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[dawsonct]

Christopher, the guy doing the filming may indeed be a joik, but if you listen carefully during the video, the workers are hearing it from the folks on the street as well.

There are times for the staid politeness of the Pac NW (I refuse to call being polite and non-confrontational “passive-aggressive”) and there are times for vociferous protest.

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[christopherboffoli]

dawsonct: Having lived in NYC, it was no surprise to me that it went down that way. New Yorkers are known for being outspoken. But it is too easy to Monday morning quarterback someone else’s job when you’re sitting in your warm apartment watching city employees of NYC in the midst of an 18 hour shifts clearing the streets.

And I guess seeing a little bit of body damage done to an SUV wouldn’t inspire me to vociferous protest :-)

Clearly, I wouldn’t be happy if it were my car. But there’s no reason to yell and scream. It’s just a car. You take down the insurance info from the supervisor and go on with your day.

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[austin]

I couldn’t help but notice in the video, at about 2:29 and a couple times after that, the camera dips back to reveal its operator clad in nothing but what appear to be boxer briefs. If I were in my underpants with the window open and snow everywhere I’d be hollering too, but for different reasons from him.

The near side of the street had impeccably shoveled sidewalks.

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[Sue]

Austin, in one place I lived in NYC, it was a constant 80 degrees in our apt. all winter. Most apts. there do not have control over your heat, and you do not ever tell your landlord you are too hot, or else it will swing to a very cold temp. So that reminded me of wandering around in short tank tops all summer in that apt.

As for the sidewalks, I do miss that – there’s a law there that you must clean the sidewalks within X hours of the snow stopping (I think it’s 4 hrs. or so) or you can get a hefty fine, and most do shovel and salt.

As a New Yorker, I lived through a handful of similar blizzards there, and this one seemed to be unusual in how it was handled – not as efficient as one would expect. I remember trekking to work once the day after a 2′ blizzard, and the trains ran fine and offices didn’t close. The biggest issue is where to put 2′ of snow, and people would shovel sidewalks, but forget to shovel a way to cross the street, so you’d be mountain climbing at corners in Manhattan and sliding down. Quite the experience!

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[christopherboffoli]

Sue: I remember well those snow mountains on the corners, as well as the ambiguously deep slush puddles that were often on the other side of them ;-)

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