New Yorkers still irked as roads finally begin to clear

Bloomberg, speaking in the Bronx, said that deliveries were returning to normal. And while he said he understands that people are still struggling to get to work, he urged patience.

He says the city is doing everything it can and using all its resources to get the streets plowed and neighborhoods dug out.

Bloomberg said 1,200 laborers were hired Wednesday and will be again Thursday to help ailing city residents.

The mayor said 100 percent of primary roads, 96 percent of secondary roads and 89 percent of tertiary roads have been plowed, and that most of the unplowed streets are residential areas, mostly in Brooklyn.

Bloomberg said the city will not rest until all streets have been plowed, and alternate-side and metered parking will remain suspended on Thursday.

The anger had been reaching a boiling point over the slow removal of snow on so many streets in New York City.

The City Council is calling for an investigation into why so many neighborhoods were still buried in snow, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio sent a letter to Bloomberg demanding to know what happened. (You can read the full text of that letter at the bottom of this article.)

Three days after the blizzard, buses and cars were still stuck in snow. And the many cars that were abandoned made it even more difficult to plow.

"It's already two days! He never touched side streets. It's terrible," Astoria resident Mel Giorgio said.

So with shaking hands, the 72-year-old Giorgio decided to take his own shovel to the unplowed street in front of his home. Vehicles have been getting stuck there since Sunday.

The untouched streets were not just diifficult for commerce, but made it impossible for those caring for the sick and elderly.

"The mayor needs to stop acting like Baghdad Bob and saying everything's okay," City Councilman Peter Vallone said. "It's not okay, and we can see it with our own eyes."

The mayor said cuts to the sanitation department personnel had no effect on snow removal efforts, yet cleanup is clearly hampered. Many blame the mayor.

"He don't care about the other boroughs," one resident said. "It's all about the money, and Manhattan has the money. If this was Manhattan, it's gonna be cleaned."

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Bloomberg was much more contrite and less defensive about the city response on Tuesday, admitting the city doesn't have the resources to tackle the massive job easily.

"We can't do everything all the time, and we are doing the best we can," he said.

But his handling of the situation is not sitting well on Staten Island, where residents are boiling over.

"The block hasn't gotten snow plowed at all," resident Salvatore Lanza said. "Finally I took matters into my own hands. I told my wife I'll just come right out of the driveway and I'll just start plowing."

He and his neighbors on Latham Lane have seen snow plows drive by and clear out nearby Woodrow Road, but they haven't made any right turns onto their block.

"You see what they did? They blocked the intersection with the cross street," Mike Poracaro said.

Folks in Brooklyn are also fuming.

Brooklyn Heights side streets are just now seeing plows, while Flatbush and Bay Ridge had acres of untouched snow.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz told Eyewitness News that the system didn't work this time, and he's demanding answers.

"This was a royal screw-up,," he said.

In Howard Beach, Queens, the storm made isolated pockets of the city even more remote and fueled politicians' outrage that other neighborhoods were favored by city street plows.

"The lack of attention to secondary streets is shocking," state Sen.-elect Tony Avella wrote city officials. "(Even Main Street by the U.S. Post Office has not been plowed.)"

The cost of the storm, in neighborhood after neighborhood far from the city's center, went beyond snowed-in streets. Subways and buses ground to a halt, particularly on the elevated tracks more common in outer boroughs and susceptible to snow drifts.

Pedestrians in hiking boots squeezed past each other in the narrow pathways between sidewalk snowbanks.

Most small businesses were open along Cross Bay Boulevard, the neighborhood's main drag, though snow was piled high in front of a Japanese restaurant.

Chris Wierzbicki shoveled out his driveway to clear a path for his mother-in-law. "She's got to get to Social Security tomorrow," he said.

About 50 blocks north, in Ozone Park, Willem Buis was trying to help his neighbors get out of their front doors.

"I just came from an old man who is 83 and hasn't shoveled on the corner there," said Buis, who is 73. "I started at 9, I stopped for an hour. Over three hours already, and it's still not done."

Buis was at his weekend job as an Access-a-Ride dispatcher during the height of the storm Sunday. He said 12 vehicles got stuck in the snow. The city said on Tuesday that hundreds of buses and dozens of ambulances were stuck on snow-packed streets, slowing plowing efforts.

Bloomberg said ambulance drivers probably erred in driving down unplowed roads. He said they should have remained on cleared streets and walked down those streets to respond to calls.

Hayden Hunt was upset about a stuck ambulance he'd seen in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

"Now how you expecting somebody having a heart attack, you're going to help them out and the ambulance can't even get through?" he asked.

Hunt was waiting with a dozen other people at a bus stop in Bed-Stuy.

Then word came from a woman who seemed to know what she was talking about: The B46 bus wasn't running because some of the streets on its route weren't plowed yet.

Semone Lucas had waited an hour.

"Now come to find out it's not even coming at all, and it's just through word of mouth," said Lucas, who was trying to visit a friend at Kings County Hospital. "There isn't anyone here."

Many of the side streets in Sheepshead Bay and eastern Brooklyn were still untouched by snow crews as of late Tuesday night. With cars and buses trapped in snow banks and only the main roads safe enough for driving, many residents were walking to wherever they had to go.

Artem Shmeriga, 20, of Sheepshead Bay, was stuck in Bensonhurst for two days until he finally made the 3½-mile trek home by foot Tuesday.

"I was walking along Avenue X and it was like something from 'I Am Legend.' There were six or seven buses pulled over and cars everywhere - even on sidewalks," Shmeriga said. "It was very creepy."

Steve Tropper, 62, of Brooklyn, saw much of the same during his 16 hours of driving for a car service Tuesday - and his shift was far from over.

"The main streets are cleared, but they didn't even start plowing the avenues until 5 tonight, and the side streets still haven't been plowed," Tropper said shortly before midnight Tuesday. "It was atrocious. If I was grading the mayor, I'd give him a 'C' on this one."

Tropper said he counted seven stranded buses on a one-mile stretch of Coney Island Avenue.

Text of Bill de Blasio's letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Dear Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

I am writing to express concern and seek answers about the City's response to this past Sunday's snow storm. My office has become aware of concerns voiced by New Yorkers who are unable to leave their homes or immediate vicinity as a result of unplowed roads and public walkways. It has become evident that the outer boroughs have been disproportionately affected by the lack of plowing after Sunday's snow storm.

The storm on Sunday was severe and although the City is working feverishly now to clear the streets, I believe that the City could have taken a more precautionary approach. I am concerned that the City did not take the necessary steps to help minimize the disruptions to transportation, sanitation, and emergency services. Additionally, I think the City should have made more decisive steps to keep drivers off the roadways and prevent so many abandoned vehicles from obstructing the City's snowplows. With more winter storms ahead, it is imperative that we learn from our experiences to better prepare ourselves for future storms and natural disasters.

To better understand how the City handled this Sunday's severe storm, I request the following data from the Office of Emergency Management, the Department of Sanitation, and call information from 311 and 911. This data will be a key tool in evaluating what steps need to be taken in the future during severe storms.

Office of Emergency Management

The Office of Emergency Management is responsible for helping New York City plan and prepares for emergencies, as well as coordinates for a timely response and recovery. I have several questions regarding the Office's preparation for Sunday's storm.