A testy Mayor Bloomberg fended off criticism of the city’s failure to clear hundreds of snow-choked streets Tuesday as an avalanche of critics attacked his reputation as a supermanager.
“This mayor prides himself on saying the buck stops with him, and it should. We hold him responsible for what we’re calling theBloomberg Blizzard,” said CityCouncilman David Greenfield (D-Brooklyn).
“The whole world is laughing that the greatest city in the world cannot manage to clear the streets. New York today looks like a Third World country.”
Greenfield, normally a backer of the mayor, said every side street – and some larger avenues – in Borough Park were waiting for a plow 30 hours after the storm’s end.
Similar and worse complaints were heard from much of the snow-buried city outside Manhattan.
A Queens woman’s death Monday was blamed on the backlog of911 calls and on snow-clogged streets that delayed first responders from reaching her Corona home, said state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-Queens).
“Like many New Yorkers, I woke up two days straight to an unplowed street outside my frontdoor,” said city Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “This is not business as usual, and frustration is mounting.”
Bloomberg asked for patience.
“This storm is not like any other we’ve had to deal with,” he said. “We are doing everything we canthink of, working as hard as wecan.”
He traveled to hard-hit Brooklyn and acknowledged the anger of people whose streets hadn’t been plowed. “I’m angry, too,” he said.
Bloomberg insisted city workers were doing their best. “We won’t get to everybody every time,” he said. “Yelling about it and complaining doesn’t help.”
Still, the chorus of complaints about the city’s sluggish response was just getting revved up.
“This is unacceptable,” said CityCouncil Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), who set a Jan. 10 hearing on how the storm was handled.
“The mayor has to stop acting like ‘Baghdad Bob’ saying the streets are fine. No they aren’t. Where the hell are the plows?” Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens) wrote on Facebook.
“Seniors are trapped at home with little or no food. Emergency vehicles aren’t able to respond to emergencies,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn). “This lack of response from the city cannot go unanswered.”
State Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), who toured snow-entombed Jamaica, Far Rockaway and Cambria Heights, said he spotted just three plows in seven hours.
City officials said part of the problem was the nature of the wind-whipped storm, which quickly dumped a lot of wet snow that rapidly reburied plowed streets.
Another was timing: The unexpected blizzard warning went out on Christmas afternoon at 3:55p.m., after earlier forecasts called for a far milder storm.
Sanitation Department “employees should not have been sitting around unwrapping gifts -they should’ve been unwrapping salt and getting in their trucks,” said state Sen. Eric Adams(D-Brooklyn), who was among several pols urging Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty to fall on his sword.
“There’s no way you can have a failure of this magnitude and someone doesn’t give a letter of resignation.”
Doherty told New York 1 Tuesday that of the 4,800 workers staffing the plows, about 100 were rookies who were undertrained because of budget constraints.
“They only went to school for two weeks; they usually would go for a month,” Doherty said.
Greenfield said the city should have declared a snow emergency before the storm hit. That would have barred people from driving or parking on major streets.
Bloomberg said it was decided that “would have made the situation worse” because motorists would have been out reparking their cars as the storm hit.
At the height of the storm, the number of backlogged 911 calls hit 1,300, and heart attack victims waited up to an hour for help, sources said. One woman who went into labor and tried to walk to the hospital lost her baby.
Forty ambulances were still stuck in snowdrifts Tuesday night.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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20 Responses
“The mayor has to stop acting like ‘Baghdad Bob’
that’s the best
Wow all these politicians are ANGRY like me, so I guess I’ll go out and vote for all of them in November, or NOT!
Why is nobody making a big deal about the death of a Belzer chusid in BP because Hatzola couldn’t get to him?
I don’t think it’s wise for our Boro-park reps to pile on to the Mayor. He has his ways of getting even. We will all pay the price for their loose lips.
Bloomberg never responds well to critism
The same G-d, that was angry at the mayor for promoting a mosque near ground zero and for promoting the alternate life style community, is the same G-d that pulverized this great city to a complete standstill. We have a mayor who has values very different than our own and I actually do not pity him for all that he is experiencing now. He ran with his billions of dollars as the mayor of this world metropolis and now this city will be sued into bankruptcy. Bloomberg’s arrogance is equaled only by his ignorance of what is right and what is wrong.
David Greenfield is right on the money on this one. Too bad he is a Democrat.
Your Sister,
When did Democrat-bashing become one of the 613 mitzvot?
This is all politics. Bloomberg cut the Sanitation, which in turn is doing a “slow down”. Bloomberg also dissed Greefield by cutting Priority 7, so Greenfieldis taking Bloomberg to town.
Greenfield is starting to sound like a nut case. How does he know the whole world is laughing. In the annals of history, New York has done a great job cleaning, so things go bad in one storm and that is reason for the condemnation?
Hikind aint too happy either. Says we need an investigation.
http://www.youtube.com/user/shiezoli#p/u/2/FzzIKrH0U-s
oh come on flatbusher you are being silly, greenfield is trying to help us and is putting pressure on bloomberg and this is how you react, besides he is not the only one that is complaining , some other important people are too
Hashem just may be watching this thinking, “you people STILL think you’re in charge?? Hello, I sent a BLIZZARD…”
I’m sorry flatbusher! But the condemnation is definitely called for since yes in the past nyc did gr8 but we had a different mayor at that time!! Its bloomberg we are upset at!!
@tracht_gut: in the past “nyc did gr8” under this SAME mayor as well. A number of circumstances including but not limited to the the time of the year (fewer workers this week), the fact that the public schools were already closed, and cuts in the budget explain the current mess. Bloomberg is responsible as far as he is the mayor of the city. Clean up is taking place, just not as fast as we all would like, above circumstances explain why.
why are the plows plowing dahill road over and over and over again when its clean and are skipping the side streets????
and btw i heard the union is on a slowdown to show mayor ‘broomberg’ that he shouldnt have fired 400 DSNY workers
#10: You obviously didn’t lose business or 2/3 days pay and didn’t need Hatzoloh aid. But many other people do suffer the affects of the Bloomberg blizzard.
Greenfield should be lauded for fighting relentlessly for the community good, especially since he was supported by Bloomberg when he ran for city council.
We need Guiliani back as Mayor.
Yes we need Giuliani
Yes Greenfield is right, but he also started to like the camera. Instead of demanding hearings , he should have demanded plows!
charliehall, David Greenfield is bashing the politician in chief, the Mayor. It is fine and dandy to criticize his political affiliations.
I don’t know if it’s an error on the part of the Daily News or the unnamed city officials they mention, but this was dry snow, not wet snow. Wet snow wouldn’t have blown around so much.