New York|Frustration in Queens as New Yorkers Dig Out From the Piles of Snow
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Frustration in Queens as New Yorkers Dig Out From the Piles of Snow
Parents and students braved the snowy streets of Corona, Queens, to get to school on Monday.Credit...Uli Seit for The New York Times
By Kirk Semple
Where there had once been visible curbs and intersections, there were now snowy hillocks to navigate, puddles of unknown depth to vault and daunting bogs of slush to challenge balance and reflexes.
But for the most part, New York demonstrated its remarkable elasticity on Monday, snapping back to a kind of normalcy — frenetic and determined — after one of the largest blizzards in the city's history.
With the public transportation system mostly running smoothly, and most streets passable in vehicles, workplaces and classrooms were, as on any typical Monday, full of life.
Still, there were pockets of the city, mostly in Queens, that as late as the afternoon had yet to see a snowplow since the end of the storm, engendering the sort of wrath that keeps public officials on their toes.
"He dropped the ball," William Borrero, a business consultant and resident of the Ridgewood neighborhood, said of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Mr. Borrero was standing on his doorstep late on Monday morning, gazing out at the snowy stillness of his block, now a long stretch of undulating whiteness more than two feet deep. He had not seen a plow drive by since the storm. The street was impassable.
Other residents in the neighborhood were equally unforgiving.
"Very poor," said Carlos Diaz, a maintenance worker for the Police Department, adding, "Queens is always, like, last or something."
Mr. de Blasio spent several hours during the day in Queens touring some of the neighborhoods that had seen the largest snowfalls and were still struggling to dig themselves out. It was the second day in a row he had made a trip to the borough to express his concerns and to oversee the deployment of additional snow-clearing resources.
While he praised emergency workers and the Sanitation Department for its work over the weekend, he acknowledged that the city's response in Queens had been uneven.
"If I'm living on one of those blocks, I'm going to be upset, I want to get my block cleared," he said at a news conference.
At the height of the storm on Saturday, the city had deployed about 2,200 pieces of snow-removing equipment throughout the city, including snowplows, spreaders and rear loaders, about 740 of which were designated for Queens, said Kathryn Garcia, the sanitation commissioner.
As the storm hit the city, more equipment was rerouted to the borough, officials said, with the number of units reaching more than 900 by midday on Sunday, as well as more than 170 front-end loaders, which were being used to haul snow from the smaller streets rather than push it to the curb.
By Monday, the mayor said, most of the major and secondary roads in the city had been cleared and were in good condition, but some smaller streets were in worse shape.
Still, those efforts were not enough to assuage some Queens residents, including some elected representatives, who accused the mayor and his administration of neglecting the borough.
Snowplows Get Stuck in Queens
After the weekend's heavy snowfall, some plows struggled while attempting to clear streets in Queens on Monday.
Queens neighborhoods that appeared to be suffering the greatest lag in plowing on Monday included Corona, Elmhurst, Ridgewood and Sunnyside.
In explaining why Queens proved to be particularly challenging, Mr. de Blasio and other officials pointed out that the borough is not only the largest in terms of square miles but also has the most roadways: Of the more than 19,000 "lane miles" in the city, over 6,300 are in Queens, according to the Sanitation Department.
Officials also said that some parts of Queens received more snow than the rest of the city — in some places the snowfall topped 30 inches.
Some plows even got stuck in deep snow in the borough, further impeding the effort, officials said.
In addition, Queens, which is highly residential, has a lot of narrow, dead-end and curvy streets, all of which make access for snowplows more difficult.
And even though many streets received at least one pass from a plow during the blizzard, the snow was falling at rates of as much as three inches per hour, which quickly negated the plows' work, officials said.
But Mr. de Blasio vehemently denied that Queens was ignored in favor of Manhattan and other boroughs — a time-honored allegation heard throughout Queens on Monday.
In an interview with WOR radio, he called this assertion "mythology" based in part on the city's response to a blizzard in 2010, in which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his administration were accused of failing to move quickly to clear streets, particularly beyond Manhattan.
Mr. de Blasio, at a news conference on Monday, sought to draw a sharp contrast between his administration's performance and Mr. Bloomberg's in 2010.
During the earlier storm, Mr. de Blasio said, "the city did not make adjustments as quickly as it could have and it took days." In contrast, he said, his administration was far more nimble in deploying equipment.
"As Manhattan got secured, much of Brooklyn got secured, much of the Bronx got secured, all the additional equipment was moved off to Queens to reinforce the Queens effort," he said.
Air traffic was returning to normal at area airports after airlines canceled thousands of flights over the weekend. There were about 876 cancellations on Monday at the three main airports in the New York region, which handle a total of about 4,400 flights a day, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
For regional commuters, most trains and buses were running on Monday, though the Long Island Rail Road continued to have problems. There were widespread delays along the lines that were open, and several branches were still suspended during the evening commute.
The subway was mostly operating smoothly, but city buses were facing delays and detours because of road conditions.
Early on Monday, the Long Island Rail Road said that some tracks had frozen over because of low temperatures overnight, delaying the start of service. Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said they were investigating what went wrong and would present a full report on the problems to the agency's board.
Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the authority, said the storm brought more snow to Long Island — nearly 30 inches in some places — than in the Metro-North Railroad's territory north of the city, where trains were running smoothly on Monday.
Snow Cleanup in New York and Virginia
With the snow removal after the storm underway, some East Coast residents questioned why it took so long.
(SOUNDBITE) JASON ROSAEO, SAYING: "We're all wondering what happened to the sanitation department why they didn't care about these blocks." 6. (SOUNDBITE) (English) JIMMY DURAKO, NEW YORK CITY BUSINESS OWNER, SAYING: "I work all night, I clean the snow, then I go home this time." Nearby in Virginia, many residents spent hours shoveling, only to have snowplows come along and undo all of the work. (SOUNDBITE) VIRGINIA RESIDENT STEVE MELNIKOFF, SAYING: "I'm almost so outraged by state I'm liable to have a heart attack now thinking about it."
With the snow removal after the storm underway, some East Coast residents questioned why it took so long.CreditCredit...Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For Queens residents already struggling with clogged roads, it did not help that two Long Island Rail Road branches that were closed on Monday are in parts of Queens where subway service is sparse. The Port Washington branch, which runs past Citi Field, and the Far Rockaway branch, which travels east of Jamaica Center, were suspended for much of the day.
"I wasn't expecting it to be so bad because it snowed Saturday," said Belinda Brocken, an in-home day care provider waiting at Pennsylvania Station for a Long Island Rail Road train to Great Neck. "This is Monday. The trains are delayed, and they're not explaining anything."
The de Blasio administration also came under fire from some parents for its decision to open the schools on Monday, a move the mayor defended, saying the commute was manageable for the vast majority of students. The attendance rate on Monday for the public schools was about 74.2 percent. By comparison, the citywide attendance on Friday, before the storm hit, was about 90 percent.
A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Devora Kaye, said the attendance rate on Monday was "fairly typical for school days immediately following massive storms." The lowest rate was registered on Staten Island, with 70.4 percent, and the highest in Manhattan, with 80.7 percent. In Queens, it was 71.1 percent.
Julissa Polano, who was walking her 5-year-old daughter to school in Corona, said she did not think the roads were safe for buses or the sidewalks safe.
"I don't think it's fair to the kids," she said. As she spoke, a boy slipped and fell in front of her, losing a shoe in the slush.
But some in Queens, even in the hardest-hit areas, adopted a more pragmatic view.
"You can't make everybody happy," said Louie Biasi, a retired driver for Coca-Cola. "If you live in the Northeast, you got to get used to this stuff. Move to Florida or Arizona."