The Day After the February 2013 Blizzard

 

 

 

 

Connecticut Light and Power CEO Resigns Amid Criticism

The CEO of Connecticut Light and Power has resigned. Jeff Butler has stepped down after his company failed to restore power following the October nor'easter in any semblance of a timely manner, and after withering criticism over how the company failed to make necessary preparations ahead of the storm that could have mitigated the disastrous blackouts and restored power more swiftly.

There are multiple investigations into CLP's mishandling of both Hurricane Irene and the snowstorm, and one area of attention is whether the company put profits ahead of power distribution and maintenance programs (including tree trimming).

Connecticut's Utility Fails To Meet Own Deadline To Restore Power

Connecticut Light and Power is the poster child for all that is wrong with power utilities in the country. Not only can it not provide its basic purpose - reliable power distribution, but it can't even make its own deadlines to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people across the state.

Thousands of customers are still without power two weeks after the early season snowstorm.

CLP's parent company, Northeast Utilities, has put up $10 million to offer assistance to its customers and waived penalties and other fees from the storm period. That's cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of customers who were without power for nearly two weeks.

Gov. Dannel Malloy empowered a panel to investigate the utility and thus far there's no good news for the utility. It cut back on tree trimming, and while the utility can claim that it has spent more on trimming in recent years, it's less than it was spending a decade ago (as adjusted for inflation). That translates into less miles of line that gets trimmed - meaning that more trees are likely to cause service disruptions.

Others are now focusing on CLP's parent company, and how the political favors and lobbying has won it the right to little oversight or responsibility when things go horribly wrong.

The State Attorney General is working with a risk management company to try and figure out what the utility did and is an expansion of similar investigations being carried out in the wake of the utility's failings during Hurricane Irene.

There are five separate investigations ongoing into CLP's actions during the aftermath from Irene and the snowstorm.

Power Remains Out For Millions In Northeast; Connecticut Remains Hardest Hit

While I may have gotten power restored yesterday, millions of other people in the NYC metro area and up into New England are still suffering for lack of power.

PSE&G has been ramping up its response, and they've got more trucks and equipment stashed at the parking lot for Garden State Plaza than when they used it as a staging area for Hurricanes Irene and Lee. They're using the lot to stash equipment ranging from poles and transformers to power lines and other key equipment to get the distribution lines up and running.

Connecticut Light and Power is saying that it hopes to get power restored to 99% of its customers by Sunday. There are also reports that CLP's response may have been slow because the company hadn't paid contractors for work done during the storm response to Hurricane Lee and Irene.

On Tuesday, Butler also said that he was aware of reports that a slow response from out-of-state contractors who were hesitant to travel to Connecticut to aid in power restoration was because they had not been paid from their work during tropical storm Irene.

When asked if the non-payment had been an issue that prompted the contractors to avoid showing up sooner in Connecticut this week, Butler said, "I'm not aware that it has been.''

"I know our customers are extremely frustrated,'' Butler said. "It's not a pleasure to have customers without power.''

He added, "Unlike Irene, it's cold at night. ... We recognize the frustration.''

Butler is the COO of CLP; and the company better be looking at revisiting the policy in light of the devastating outages that affected all parts of Connecticut and nearly took CLP off the grid entirely.

Trying to pin the blame on the lack of mutual aid from PSE&G or Con Ed makes no sense, not when utilities up and down the East Coast from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York were struggling to deal with millions of outages themselves. PSE&G was bringing in crews from Ohio and elsewhere to assist; so too was Con Ed; yet CLPwas finding it difficult to track down mutual assistance? That would appear to have more to do with the CLP company policy than the mutual assistance companies.

Even the feds are noticing that the storm response is slower than during Irene, particularly in Connecticut:

Bryan says utility companies didn't have time to get additional workers from other regions in place before the snowstorm like they were able to do before Irene in August. The companies had several days to prepare for Irene and only a few days to prepare for the snowstorm, which hit the region harder than was forecast. At midweek last week, some forecasters said the storm was going to miss New England.

Thousands of extra crews from across the country are now helping to restore power in the Northeast, where some utility customers aren't expected to get their electricity back until next week.

"When you know you've got a hurricane coming, part of the mutual assistance package is to pre-stage crews," Bryan said. "So after the hurricane has come and gone, you already have crews on the outskirts ready to come in and start working. … This storm hit, and these crews were not mobilized."

Six thousand extra utility crews were either working in the Northeast on Tuesday or getting close to arriving, officials said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who asked the Department of Energy for help in coordinating the cleanup and power restoration response, said Tuesday that he was disappointed that the number of out-of-state crews helping in the state was lower than expected. A spokeswoman for the governor said he wasn't criticizing the utilities' response, just trying to do everything he could to get the power on quicker.

About 700 extra workers on Tuesday were helping the 200 regular crews of Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state's largest utility, which had requested 1,000 additional crews. The weekend storm caused more than 830,000 outages in the state — a record — and about 650,000 customers remained in the dark Tuesday.

Bryan said it appeared there were problems in the way extra workers were being distributed in the region.

"If you look at the outages in Connecticut, which basically equal the outages of all the other places combined, you really don't have yet a fair distribution of workers, mutual assistance teams out here doing this," Bryan said.

CLPadmits that they didn't request mutual assistance before the storm hit, as they did in preparing for Hurricane Irene. That was a serious mistake on their part, and one of the reasons why it is going to take as long as it is for power restoration.

The latest figures on outages is here.

North Jersey Still Suffering From Widespread Power Outages

For a second straight day, Northern New Jersey is without power across much of the region following the deadly nor'easter that left snows of nearly two feet in some places, but the lasting effects are the thousands of trees that were downed or damaged as a result of the heavy snow combined with leaves till being on the trees.

That's a recipe for disaster - taking out power line after power line. The nasty weather and snow further hampers the efforts to restore power since power lines block roads that have to be plowed so that crews can get to where they have to repair lines. You had to clear lines so that the plows could get through. It was the proverbial chicken or egg problem for some parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachussetts (which saw some areas get 2+ feet of snow) and the Hudson River Valley in New York.

As with the recover from Hurricanes Irene and Lee, people are wondering why utilities aren't being forced to locate utilities underground, where they wouldn't succumb to weather events like this every time the wind blows.

It's a good question and states and localities have a patchwork of rules regarding utility hookups.

Some require that new developments place utilities underground at the developers' expense. Others have no requirements.

It all comes down to cost.

Placing the lines underground may be more costly at the outset - 8-10 times more expensive than running lines on utility poles. Those are costs that are passed on to utility consumers. The underground lines are also potentially more expensive to replace as their life expectancy isn't nearly as long as overhead lines under normal conditions. Also, power restoration after floods are extremely troublesome for underground lines. Whereas a flood event may leave the overhead lines undisturbed, a flood for underground utilities may requires days or weeks of work to restore power.

Thus, it's a balancing act as to whether a given area would benefit from overhead or underground lines.

However, with the recurrence of major outages in the area, it's time that the utilities reconsider the overhead lines in troublesome areas.

Moreover, all the utilities should look towards ramping up their tree maintenance programs to prune back trees in and along their rights of way to prevent downed trees taking out entire towns and communities.

New York City Council To Grill City Officials on Inadequate Snowstorm Response

The City Council will be holding public hearings today to attempt to get to the bottom of why the City did such a poor job in clearing snow during the Boxing Day blizzard and its aftermath. The snowpocalypse was incredible by city standards, because snow emergency routes were not cleared of snow or vehicles, and secondary and tertiary routes were impassible for days following the blizzard despite claims from city officials that the situation was well in hand.

Among the key issues that will be discusses is how and why city officials chose not to make a snow emergency declaration, which would have assisted the Sanitation Department in clearing the 250+ snow emergency routes through the city and accelerated clearing those secondary and tertiary routes.

Separately, four separate investigations by prosecutors are looking into claims that there was a work slowdown, sickout, or other work action that reduced the Sanitation Department's response.

For me, the inadequate response arose precisely because a snow emergency declaration was not issued and the MTA similarly failed to take its preparations up to the maximum level and put lives at risk by sending out buses and trains without adequate equipment, which eventually shut down the entire city's bus and subway system because equipment was snowed in.

UPDATE:
The webcast of the hearings can be viewed here.

UPDATE:
Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith has been on the hook for the city's poor response because he was brought in to deal with logistics and operations. Under questioning, Goldsmith admits that the city screwed up and provided an outline of how the city will do things going forward:

As City Council members pounded the administration with questions, Mr. Goldsmith, who is in charge of operations, acknowledged that the chain of command was murky; that the failure to declare a state of emergency hampered the response; that city workers were not deployed adequately and private contractors should have been called in; and that officials waited too long to plan for the storm.

“We owe you and all New Yorkers for that lack of performance our administration’s apology and my personal promise not to let it happen again,” Mr. Goldsmith said.

In the midst of the hearing, the Bloomberg administration released a 15-point plan of action [pdf] to prevent future missteps. The plan, as explained by Mr. Goldsmith and included in a news release, is heavy on logistics, but includes pledges to rewrite the process for declaring emergencies; equip every sanitation truck with a GPS device; improve communications; and create a Web site to provide real-time weather updates.

What's interesting is that the plan of action notes that a majority of Sanitation Department trucks lack 2-way radios, and those that do are all operating on the same frequency, which makes for problems that harken back to the dark days after 9/11 when it became clear that the emergency response was hampered by inadequate communications by and between the FDNY and NYPD. Moreover, the City has to do a better job in high volume emergency events as the 911/311 systems were overwhelmed with calls.

A huge problem with the snowstorm was a failure to communicate and a disconnect between what the Mayor's office and officials were saying and the facts on the ground in the outer boroughs where snow simply wasn't being cleared from the streets in anything resembling an orderly fashion. Adjusting the snow emergency protocols is a good first step, as is improving communications response.

NYC Snow Response Investigations Ramp Up

Federal investigators are now looking into the putrid New York City snow removal response. Brooklyn and Queens District Attorneys are also investigating malfeasance by Sanitation Department workers.

Every day brings another new revelation about Sanitation Department foul ups. The latest includes Sanitation Department workers apparently piling snow up at or along Washington Cemetery to the point of tipping over nearly two dozen gravestones.

Sanit crews dumped tons of dirty snow from the Christmas weekend blizzard into the city’s biggest Jewish cemetery, toppling 21 gravestones and wrecking an iron fence.

"It’s jarring, and it’s an emotional thing," said Yana Zhuravel, a lawyer whose grandparents’ headstones in Washington Cemetery in Midwood, Brooklyn, were among those knocked over.

"Clearly, nobody came with the intention of doing this, I’m sure," said Zhuravel.

"But when an accident happens of this caliber, you expect some form of accountability."

"We were devastated," said cemetery manager Marisa Tarantino.

Workers believe the snow was dumped sometime over the New Year’s holiday, Tarantino said.

Union officials keep saying that the poor sanitation response can be traced back to poor funding, but that ignores the stupidity witnessed on videos showing Sanitation Department drivers turning SUVs into pinatas, and videos showing Sanitation plows driving on snowbound streets with their plows in an upright position - doing anything but clearing the snow.

“We have some video of sanitation trucks not plowing streets despite being on plow routes. Some units were sitting at Dunkin Donuts for 7,8, 9, 10 hours,” Halloran said.

Additional footage showed a V-shaped plow on East 24th Street and Quentin Road in the Madison section of Brooklyn that appears to have been set at the wrong angle because while it moved some snow, it also left much of the white stuff on the road behind it.

All of the pictures raise new questions about what some sanitation workers were doing during the blizzard.

“If there were many trucks that did not have their plows down somebody gave them the order and we have to find out who that was,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz told Kramer.

The Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty says that his workers did a tremendous job considering the difficult task of removing snow from thousands of miles of streets, but even Mayor Bloomberg concedes that the city failed in its essential obligations to clear the streets to make them passable.

New York City Freeing Itself From Snowy Grip As Investigations Commence Into Poor Snowstorm Response

New York City streets are now finally passable of the icy grip of the snow for a bit as the warmer weather has finally melted a significant amount of snow - which the City has finally plowed from streets. It's still not ideal, but a damned sight better than this time last week, when Mayor Mike Bloomberg was saying things were business as usual as much of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island didn't so much as see a snowplow in sight and snow emergency routes were impassible due to lack of plows and stranded vehicles of all sorts.

We'll be getting investigations and hearings starting next week, so those reports about sanitation department work slowdowns or other work actions may get new life. The City's Sanitation Department appears to be overcompensating for the lack of snow removal earlier in the week

And since the snow will keep melting (although it wont completely disappear by the end of the week when another potential snow maker will come on through, the City is now griping about the lack of garbage pickups. Again, this is a health, safety, welfare issue - and the garbage pickups were halted in the wake of the snowstorm but the garbage trucks can now be tasked with garbage removal.

Throw in the potential for manhole explosions due to saltwater intrusion into electric power underground vaults and stray voltage shocking pets while walking, and the inevitable potholes the size of Mt. Rushmore, there will be plenty to gripe about in the coming weeks.

UPDATE:
That didn't take long. Mrs. Lawhawk forwards along a 1010wins news report of a manhole fire that required a building evacuation due to high levels of carbon monoxide:

The melting snow and salted road eroded cables below sending smoke and flames shooting out of manholes Monday in East Harlem.

1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reports

The Fire Department evacuated the Shield Institute building on 107th Street after elevated carbon monoxide levels were reported at the location.

Seventy-five clients from the center, which services disabled adults, were transferred to Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center.

The FDNY and Con Ed are evaluating damage to nearby transformers.

The manhole fires closed off E 106th Street to E 109th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. Check traffic and transit here.

Blizzard Cleanup and Post Mortems Contnue in New York Metro Area

While I've focused quite a bit of attention on the absurdly poor response by New York City to deal with the Boxing Day snowpocalypse, things are in pretty bad shape elsewhere in the New York metro area, including in Asbury Park and other New Jersey communities in Monmouth and Ocean Counties that were hit with 30 inches or more of snow. These towns and communities simply don't have the resources or workforce to compare with New York's 1,600 plows and 350 salt spreaders.

"There will be a thorough analysis of the sequence of events and how they were handled," said Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who was acting governor since Sunday while Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno were out of state. "I would like to know, and it will come out in the end how we performed or how poorly we performed."

Sweeney, criticized by some Monmouth County officials who charged he lifted the state of emergency too soon, said he did not know the severity of problems on Route 18 until after he had rescinded the declaration. The stretch of that highway running through Monmouth County was closed for three days

Crews were clearing snow from state highways in Monmouth and Ocean counties this afternoon. On several of those roads, including Routes 70, 35, 71 and 33, traffic was backed up because of snow-removal efforts or because lanes were still blanketed by snow.

Even today, the third day after the snow stopped, some Neptune residents were trapped in their homes because plows had not gotten to their streets.

Township Business Administrator Philip Huhn estimated 20 percent of Neptune’s nearly 600 miles of roads had not been plowed even once by this afternoon.

Monmouth County still reeling after blizzard hits New Jersey Enlarge Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger The south end of Rt.18 in the Neptune/Wall Township area is closed as remnants of blizzard that began hit New Jersey two days ago continue to paralyze the Jersey Shore.

Huhn laid the blame for the delays on state road crews, who he said failed to plow the six state highways running through the community, which forced traffic onto local roads. Once on the local roads, many vehicles became stuck in snow banks, hampering municipal plowing efforts, Huhn contended.

So, many of these communities are still digging out.

New York City has finally managed to get a plow on to every street. Okay, most streets - those that have stranded and abandoned cars are still blocked.

Sanitation workers are complaining about the stuck cars, but they're also complaining that new and lighter tire chains and new equipment that doesn't have the horsepower of the older equipment is also to blame.

Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone), who claimed he had proof of a slowdown, acknowledged it was based on chats with Queens workers - with no indication of a citywide job action.

Instead, Halloran said, three workers in Queens said supervisors told them to take their time plowing, with the message, "If you miss streets, don't worry about it. The mayor's office doesn't worry about Sanitation."

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty plans a comprehensive review of the department's snow fighting effort - including possible equipment failures.

Plow drivers have complained new lighter tire chains are not as effective and that energy-efficient trucks don't have enough power to get unstuck from snow piles.

Investigations have been opened by the City Advocate, the State Department of Investigations and the City Council will be holding hearings on the disastrous snow response. Of particular note is the possibility that sanitation workers engaged in some form of slowdown or work action, and new reports by the New York Post claim that sanitation workers targeted certain Brooklyn and Queens communities because they were upset over the budget and workforce cuts.

The possibility of a slowdown or work action of some form is plausible considering that 400 jobs are being cut and another 100 administrators are being demoted as a cost-saving measure. It would also increase the number of drivers and lower the number of bureaucrats.

Brooklyn was the hardest hit borough, although Staten Island is close behind.

With the tremendous amounts of snow that fell from the skies and the tons of salt used to melt the snows and reduce ice formation, expect to see a rash of manhole explosions and stray voltage incidents in coming weeks as the water and salt seep into electrical vaults and cause problems.

Decisions By Mayor, Top Staffers, and MTA Led To Failures During Boxing Day Blizzard

The post mortems are starting to roll in and it doesn't look good for the Bloomberg Administration or the MTA. Both failed in a spectacular fashion to prepare and gear up for one of the worst snowstorms to hit the New York metro area in history.



Unlike the video's assertions, the key difference is that the snow emergency was never declared that would have kept the key arterial roads clear of traffic - or at a minimum vastly reduced the amount of traffic. Once people understood the severity of the oncoming storm, they would have taken the necessary precautions.

The first and worst decision was for the Mayor to not declare a snow emergency, which would have prevented the kinds of apocalyptic scenes witnessed across the city on snow emergency routes that were clogged with all kinds of stranded vehicles. The snow emergency would have meant that all such traffic was off those roads unless the vehicles were equipped with tire chains or snow tires.

By failing to make that call, Mayor Bloomberg set back the Sanitation Department's efforts considerably since they couldn't effectively plow those arterial routes, preventing them from even getting onto the secondary and tertiary streets.

It took several days before Mayor Bloomberg would admit that there were serious problems. His nonchalance on Monday was breathtaking in its dissociation with the facts on the ground and that the outer boroughs were facing a health and safety crisis because roads were impassible.

The New York Times has presented an early review of the storm response, and the Mayor's office, his top officials and the MTA failed to enact snow emergency and contingency plans for severe snowstorms that would have prepositioned equipment and prevented the kind of catastrophic meltdown of the transportation system. That's inexcusable.

At 3:55 p.m. on Saturday, the Weather Service issued a blizzard warning, forecasting 11 to 16 inches of snow, with higher amounts in some areas. It warned that strong winds would cause “considerable blowing and drifting of snow” that could take down power lines and tree limbs.

“Extremely dangerous travel conditions developing due to significant snow accumulations,” it said.

The city has long had a weapon in its arsenal to consider for such moments: the ability to declare a snow emergency.

Doing so allows the city to ban vehicles from parking on more than 300 designated “snow emergency streets.” Vehicles that remain after the declaration can be ticketed or towed. And any vehicles moving on those streets must use chains or snow tires.

The rationale is straightforward: clearing vehicles from those streets gives plows the best chance to move through them rapidly, keeping emergency services routes open and allowing the plows to move onto secondary streets.

Norman Steisel, who was at the forefront of snow removal in the city for a dozen years during the Koch and Dinkins administrations, said the declaration of an emergency from a mayor also helped clarify among the public the confusing array of forecasts often heard on television.

“It’s a very strong, powerful public message which has a certain effect,” Mr. Steisel said.

Jerome M. Hauer, who spent four years as the city’s emergency management commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he advised the mayor on whether to declare a snow emergency based on forecasts from the Weather Service and other sources.

There were no hard and fast rules, Mr. Hauer said, but anything above six or seven inches would start “to create problems for the city, so it was clear you’d have to start thinking it was time to declare a snow emergency.”

Both current and former city officials had difficulty recalling how many times such an emergency had been declared. One current official said the last one had been declared in 2003.

Still, Mr. Hauer asserted, “if they said we were getting a blizzard, it was kind of a no-brainer.”

But the Bloomberg administration decided not to call a snow emergency. One city official briefed on the response to the storm said it was explicitly considered. But ultimately Mr. Doherty and Ms. Sadik-Khan decided against it, said Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for Ms. Sadik-Khan.

Mr. Solomonow said the forecast was not severe enough.

“As of about 5 p.m. on Christmas Day,” he said, “the forecast called for about a foot of accumulation, which is not uncommon and which is not a basis for a snow emergency declaration.”

Mr. Bloomberg, asked Tuesday why an emergency had not been declared, confused the issue by asserting that doing so would have put more cars on the roads, potentially creating more problems. But clearly, had he declared an emergency shortly after the Weather Service’s blizzard warning, there would have been ample time to move cars before the heavy snow began.

Mr. Hauer called the decision bewildering, and Mr. Bloomberg’s claims misleading.

“We’ve done snow emergencies in the city for decades, many decades, and people have always found a place to put their cars,” said Mr. Hauer, who has had many angry disagreements with Mr. Bloomberg over the years. “You’ve just got to give them enough time.”

The MTA dropped the ball as well, as it refused to implement its major contingency plan until it was too late. By the time the call was made, getting adequate staffing to make a difference was impossible because people simply couldn't get around to where they needed to be.

As the Daily News has reported, the authority's efforts were hampered by a manpower shortage due in part to holiday vacations. Some workers who were off couldn't make it in because of impassable roads, officials said.

Whatever the reason, several diesel locomotives that don't require third-rail electricity - valuable equipment in keeping the rails clear and rescuing stranded passengers - were stuck in outer-borough railyards, sources said.

In one instance, a diesel was deployed on the Nos. 2 and 5 lines in the Bronx and should have run throughout the storm, said the NYC Transit manager, who is directly involved in train operations.

Instead, it returned to the yard, apparently for a crew change, but no one was there to take over, and it got snowed in, he said.

Another diesel locomotive never made it out of the same yard, the manager said. And one of the giant snow-thrower trains - capable of removing several tons of snow an hour - also sat idle for at least part of the blizzard, according to the manager.

In another lapse, some portable heating devices didn't work, he said.

A longtime motorman assigned to another yard said it took hours for workers to dig out and put ice-scraping "shoes" on a locomotive used to clear tracks in the yard, he said.

The Daily News reports that the Sanitation Department was understaffed because of the Christmas holiday and that some of its plow drivers weren't prepared for the task at hand.

Meanwhile, the NY Post is reporting that the Sanitation Department's response was due to a work action by sanitation workers angry over budget cuts and a 5% workforce reduction. Some workers quoted by the Post claimed that they were told to keep the plow blades higher than grade level so that streets would require additional passes, and even skipping streets to pad overtime:

The snitches "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

New York's Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process -- and pad overtime checks -- which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.
(snip)

But multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised.

And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay.

One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.

If those reports can be substantiated, then union officials and those involved in the decision for a slowdown should face criminal charges for the deaths attributed to impassible roads - and there are several.

Union officials have been calling such claims nonsense, and with good reason. If these reports were true, the union faces a huge backlash from the public who has seen nothing but stranded vehicles and unplowed roads days after the blizzard struck.

In the end, the city's response was wholly inadequate and put the public at risk because of a failure to declare a snow emergency and enact plans designed to minimize the disruptions to the transportation systems throughout the City.

Apologies wont be enough this time. I expect to see increased calls for the resignation of both the Sanitation Commissioner and Transportation Commissioner in coming days.

UPDATE:
It's about priorities. For whatever reason, it was more important to get bike lanes cleared than to get the roads cleared - including the aforementioned Ocean Parkway? Now, the bike lane that Rep. Greenfield refers to is also a pedestrian walkway and the Parks Department is responsible for clearing those paths, but that's resources that could have been devoted to assisting in street and crossing clearance.

The following video shows the craziness on Ocean Parkway yesterday.

Man in a Blizzard

This is a documentary short film by Jamie Stuart of the blizzard as it hits New York in all its natural glory and splendor. It's the flip side to the ugly way that the City officials have handled the cleanup:



Via Gothamist, which notes that the video has caught the attention of Robert Ebert, who thinks it's Oscar worthy of consideration.

NY Metro Area Still Digging Out of Snowpocalypse

The New York metro area continues digging out from the massive blizzard, but residents remain irate at Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his shoddy and nonchalant handling of the scope of the mess. He's finally admitting that the City could have done better, but that's still not an admission that he screwed up in not calling for a state of emergency.

Much of the city has yet to clear out from the piles of snow and the MTA deserves special scorn for their lackluster operation.

Details are now coming out about how poorly they handled the blizzard. One particular situation deserves special attention. Who exactly made the decision to dispatch subway trains into the teeth of the blizzard, particularly on the A line in the Rockaways? That seems to be a particularly disastrous decision as one such train was stuck with 500 passengers for nine hours. The motorman of that particular train was forced to leave the safety of the subway car and manually shovel and clear each stop signal.

"I had to get off at every signal because they were stuck in the upright position. I did this on the bridges above the water!" Hicks said. "We'd travel for a bit, get stuck, I'd get out, then we'd travel again. This happened about 20 times."

Hicks said he was astonished when his dispatcher told him to drive the train in the weather, knowing the subway couldn't handle the haul.

"I told the dispatcher, 'You've got to be kidding! You're sending us out in this stuff? This is suicide!' " he said.

And the risk of falling from the tracks was the least of his concerns

"Every time I jumped off the train, I couldn't see the third rail -- I had no idea where it was," he said about the high-voltage line that could have fried him had he come in contact with it.

When part of his train finally crawled into Aqueduct station, he was told he couldn't advance because a train carrying 500 passengers in front of him was stuck.

The MTA dispatchers should have canceled the subway operations once they saw how bad the situation was getting so that passengers and their crews would not get stuck in a dangerous position.

That mirrors the situation on MTA buses, where hundreds were dispatched despite the dangerous and impassible road conditions. Buses throughout the City remain stranded, along with hundreds of cars, trucks, and even emergency vehicles. 911 dispatchers had to triage cases, and it looks like they were overwhelmed with the volume of calls and problems with emergency crews themselves getting stuck in the snows.

There are now reports that a newborn died because emergency crews could not reach the mother and newborn for hours because the roads were impassible. That's completely unacceptable.

While investigations and hearings will be held in January, recriminations are already underway. Some are blaming job cuts and inadequate staffing due to the holidays. I think the situation is exacerbated by the Mayor's failure to declare a state of emergency at the outset of the storm, knowing full well that the weather forecasters were predicting a storm of extraordinary magnitude with the potential for crippling snow totals. Others are calling for Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty to be fired for his failure to deal with the storm adequately.

Sanitation Department records aren't clear as to whether streets are passable - they only report that they are plowed or salted.

Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said in an interview that the 2006 snowstorm — when the 24-hour record for Central Park, 26.9 inches, was set — was “a benchmark” for the Sanitation Department’s response.

“We covered all city streets within about 36 hours of the last flake, meaning that they got plowed at least once,” he said.

But Mr. Nespoli said of the city’s response to Sunday’s storm: “I’ll tell you the truth: there are problems with this one. We’ll need more than 36 hours because we lost too much time. We are scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened on this storm.”

Now, the streets are clogged with stranded vehicles and plows are still unable to clear streets - secondary and tertiary streets where most residents of the city actually live. MTA officials should have taken better precautions to keep buses off the roads so that they would not contribute to the additional problems facing snow removal crews. Sending out bus after bus onto snow-clogged routes only further contributed to the problems in clearing snow routes.

UPDATE:
Seeing is believing, and I had to travel to Brooklyn earlier today on a personal matter, and what I saw throughout the borough was absolutely astonishing.

Once you get off the Prospect Expressway, you're supposed to go onto Ocean Parkway, which is a wide boulevard with three lanes in each direction with a center median area that allows turn lanes with signal control. There are wide pedestrian paths on either side, and then access roads with parking on either side.

It is one of 250 designated snow emergency routes in the City. This is because Ocean Parkway is a major thoroughfare across Brooklyn, linking Prospect/Sunset Park with Coney Island. Several hospitals are in close proximity to Ocean Parkway and it is a vital transportation corridor parallel to Coney Island Avenue, which is a more commercial strip.

Instead of Ocean Parkway being free and clear of obstructions, it was down to two lanes in many parts - and cars were lining the center median. There were hundreds of cars stranded or parked on the median or on the driving lanes, making the parkway an obstacle course. With that being the opening course of my Brooklyn driving experience, I had to make my way to Coney Island Avenue near Avenue J.

I wouldn't hazard a turn at most intersections because the cross streets were virtually impassible - two way streets with double yellow lines were limited to one-way traffic and vehicles were stuck all over trying to get on to the tertiary roads that were not cleared at intersections. Avenue J was passable, although severely constricted despite being a bus route.

Coney Island Avenue was little better - and it too is a snow emergency route. Traffic was everywhere and while people were generally making due with the situation, it poses a tremendous health hazard if emergency crews cannot get to medical or fire emergencies in large parts of the borough.

The City is responsible for providing basic services and health, safety and welfare are its basic obligations. By not clearing the roads - and I'm referring to even the major snow emergency routes, an ongoing hazard exists and public safety is at risk. Despite Mayor Bloomberg's claims that the roads are plowed and cleared, the situation on the ground is anything but.

Moreover, driving to Brooklyn we had to pass two Sanitation Department depots on the West Side, which had dozens of idle snowplows when the Outer Boroughs were clamoring for assistance. These plows and equipment should have been marshaled to assist in clearing streets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, but then again, they could have helped clear all the lanes on the West Side Highway below 57th Street. Two lanes were mostly clear, but this is a 3-lane highway in both directions, and the restricted lanes meant that traffic was not only slowed, but it created an ongoing traffic hazard as drivers had to negotiate through treacherous conditions.

Bloomberg Getting Testy Over Snowstorm Response

Media reports are replete with complaints from New Yorkers around the City about the City's poor storm response. Mayor Mike Bloomberg keeps mentioning that this is the worst storm in the city's history (5th most at Central Park, but he's at least in the ballpark).

Addressing complaints about snow-covered streets and continued airport disruptions, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday called the blizzard of 2010 "not like any other" storm to hit the city, and said he was heading "the biggest effort to clear snow that our city has ever seen."

"We still have a long way to go," he told a press conference, but some 1,000 vehicles were removed from key highways on Monday and the city is hiring private plows to help.

Bloomberg defended his fire, police and transportation departments, saying the enormity of the blizzard overwhelmed the city and hundreds of abandoned vehicles made it that much harder to plow streets.

But, in response to a reporter's question about frustrated residents, he added that "I'm angry too" about the cleanup pace.

The problem starts at the top. Bloomberg refuses to acknowledge that he made the mistake of not declaring a state of emergency that would have given various Departments additional capabilities and forced people off the roads. The state of emergency would further show the seriousness of the situation and the more drivers that stayed off the roads, the more likely the Sanitation Department could get on with clearing roads around the City.

Major roads in Manhattan are clear, but good luck trying to traverse secondary and tertiary roads - especially in the outer boroughs. Some have not yet been touched by plows.

Then again, some side streets and SUV owners might wish that the plows had not come down their street.

As the storm bore down on the Metro area, a state of emergency would have been the prudent course of action. Not only would that have communicated the seriousness of the situation, but it would have meant that non-essential businesses would be closed and that traffic would be minimal.

Since that wasn't done, streets became clogged with cars, trucks, and even emergency vehicles and sanitation plows became stuck. Those folks who paid heed to warnings to avoid driving found themselves stuck, delayed, or stranded by buses and subways that were inoperative, delayed, or stuck on routes. The MTA has done a poor job in getting its subways operational, as there are ongoing delays, cancellations, and rerouting of trains.

That has further complicated and delayed the snow clearing operations. Staten Island residents are finding themselves unable to get in touch with 311 or other official phone lines for reporting unplowed streets (probably because everyone around the city is calling in the same problems). It's little wonder that the City gets an F from Staten Island residents.

But remember, if you fail to clear your own sidewalks, you can be subject to fines.

UPDATE:
Someone better hold the MTA accountable for sending out hundreds of buses in the snowstorm only to be stranded and stuck on route.

How Not To Tow A Stuck Front End Loader

This intrepid video should be exhibit A by the owner of a snowed in SUV in Brooklyn for why the Department of Sanitation tow truck operator and "operator" of a front end loader should be on the hook for all damages sustained by a parked and snowed in SUV.

The front end loader was stuck in snow drifts, and the tow truck is attempting to extricate the loader to poor results. Someone better explain why that front end loader wasn't equipped with tire chains given the poor conditions. Moreover, whoever was driving that equipment didn't have the first clue as to what he was doing and the tow truck operator was just as clueless.



BTW - there is quite a bit of cursing involved.

The Blizzard In Time Lapse

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Mrs. Lawhawk first saw the video last night via Zach Braff's facebook page.

The photographer had set up his Canon DSLR to take photos about every five minutes through the 20+ hours of the snowstorm.

PATH To Hell

So much for PATH running properly. It is a mess with service to the WTC running through Grove Street. Directions are hard to come by.

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UPDATE:
I expect issues with NJ Transit, because they were operating on a modified MLK holiday schedule. That train did what it was supposed to and we were able to get to Hoboken without too much trouble.

That's when the real problems began. For whatever reason, PATH was a horror show. There was no direct service between Hoboken and WTC, even though that entire route is underground. Instead, we had to transfer at Grove Street.

Big mistake.

The platform at Grove Street was a mess, and had we known that the situation was as bad as that, I would have instead traveled to 33rd Street and taken my chances with the MTA rather than being stuck in PATH hell. Three separate WTC bound trains came and went before there was room to get on a train to WTC. That was more than an hour's wait. Oh, and that train I finally got on? It was empty.

Someone at PATH did a lousy job of handling the crush of traffic from Hoboken, and instead of directing passengers to 33rd Street, they were instead pushing traffic to an overburdened station that was ill equipped to handle the traffic.

Moreover, Port Authority cops told a few people to stop taking photos of the ongoing mess at Grove Street, although quite a few people had not only snapped photos, but had sent them along to various news outlets.

Snow at Ground Zero

Ground Zero covered in snow. Following one of the largest snowstorms in the City's history, construction at Ground Zero is covered in a thick blanket of snow.

Snow

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Digging Out

The sun has come out and the winds are still howling, but the snow has finally stopped in my corner of New Jersey. It was a Nor'easter to remember and the New York City Metro area is beginning the tough task of digging out from a major snowstorm that has crippled transportation throughout the region and affect air travel around the US and across the globe.

The storm dumped the heaviest snows across much of New Jersey, with the heaviest amounts running from Mahwah, New Jersey south through Monmouth County. New York City saw at least a foot of snow in most places. Long Island got a little less, but they saw some of the strongest winds during the storm. The storm has set all kinds of records throughout New Jersey.

This is a snowstorm that developed just before Christmas across the South, so the storm's wintry effects were felt across much of the country. This puts the storm's intensity way up there on a scale of Northeastern storms. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale measures the effect of snow and takes storm totals and measures them against the population impact:

The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) developed by Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini of the National Weather Service (Kocin and Uccellini, 2004) characterizes and ranks high-impact Northeast snowstorms. These storms have large areas of 10 inch snowfall accumulations and greater. NESIS has five categories: Extreme, Crippling, Major, Significant, and Notable. The index differs from other meteorological indices in that it uses population information in addition to meteorological measurements. Thus NESIS gives an indication of a storm's societal impacts. This scale was developed because of the impact Northeast snowstorms can have on the rest of the country in terms of transportation and economic impact.

It will probably be a few weeks before the storm totals are plugged into the formula to determine the intensity, but this storm appears to have the characteristics of a major to crippling storm due to the high storm totals through New Jersey and New York City, along with the widespread snows from the Southeast through New England.

Despite the fact that the subways and buses and trains were canceled throughout the City and some commuters were stuck on subway cars for hours, Mayor Mike Bloomberg had not declared a state of emergency. Snow plows are having a tough time getting through side streets because of stranded cars; had the state of emergency been declared, people would have been less likely to be on the streets and the plows would have a better chance of getting through the streets.

It was a mistake for him not to declare a state of emergency, even as his Department chiefs and OEM were busy telling people to stay off the roads.

A Blizzard Warning is in effect for New York City from Sunday, December 26, until Monday, December 27, at 6 PM. Stay off the roads. The city needs to clear the roads of snow and abandoned vehicles so public safety can respond to emergencies. Use mass transit and exercise caution. Be safe when clearing snow.

It's tough to use mass transit when they aren't operating.

You know it's bad when there's snow deep into subway stations underground.

While only NYC area airports are closed (EWR, LGA, and JFK), and there aren't delays elsewhere in the nation, passengers are going to find that it may take days before they can return to NYC because of all the cancellations and delays.

Still, for those who don't have to dig out, it is truly a winter wonderland out there and a beautiful sight to behold. I'll be posting photos through the day.

UPDATE:
The NJ Turnpike was a mess as a closure of the George Washington Bridge overnight meant that trucks and other vehicles couldn't go across and were stranded all along the northern stretch of the Turnpike.

Good luck finding shovels, snow brushes, or snow blowers as they're sold out all over the area. I probably should have bought a snow blower at Costco back in November, when an electric model was on sale for about $200. Oh well.

UPDATE:
New Jersey drivers are reminded to clear all the snow off their cars. Under a recently enacted law, drivers will be fined for driving with snow on their roof tops.

Snowpalooza 2010

Blizzard warnings are up for most of the NYC metro region as winds are expected to start cranking up above 35 mph and visibilities drop to less than 1/4 of a mile for at least three hours during the course of the storm.

Most of the weather reports are consistent in predicting at least 10-13 inches for most of NYC, with higher amounts through New Jersey. Curiously, WPIX is predicting significantly lower amounts for NYC - 6 to 9 inches for NYC, while 9-16 through New Jersey. That's compared with the NWS , which puts 10-16 throughout the entire NYC metro region.

Mass transit is prepping for the weather conditions, but most people are probably staying home as courts in New York City are closed, New York City public schools are closed for only the third time in the past decade, and many businesses have decided to call it a day. Wall Street, however, is going to be operating today.

Many airlines have already canceled their flights in and out of the NYC airports in anticipation of problems. Amtrak's Northeast Corridor is running a vastly reduced schedule and delays should be expected. NJ Transit is also experiencing delays and NJ Turnpike and local bridges have reduced speeds for poor visibility. There are already multiple accidents on roads throughout the region. It's best to stay off the roads altogether.

Some towns in Southern New Jersey have gone through most of their salt allowances
in dealing with last week's storm, but should be able to handle the snow today.

Mrs. Lawhawk gets credit for the headline as snowpocalypse and snowmageddon were already taken.