They are sanitationmen and – as a whole – they’ve been portrayed as abominable snowmen responsible for the lousy cleanup after the Blizzard of 2010.
But five of them who work out of the Brooklyn District 11 garage – known as BK 11 – want the world to hear the “real” story.
“Okay, so what happened?” I ask, as we sit around a table in a cafe on 18th Ave. in Bensonhurst during their 30-minute lunch break on Monday, a week after the snow stopped falling.
“We were short 400 men and we had trashy equipment,” said a guy we’ll call Strongest No. 1, because the sanitmen don’t want their names in the paper.
“Forty fewer guys in BK 11 alone than in 2006,” he said, noting there are 125 workers left in BK 11, which is based on Bay 41st St.
“And Bloomberg didn’t declare an emergency right away,” Strongest No. 2 piped up.
Strongest No. 3 stirred his coffee and said, “Listen, most of us live right here in Bensonhurst. We couldn’t get our own cars out. We walked hip-deep in snow to work that Sunday.”
“My block couldn’t get plowed,” Strongest No. 4 said. “You think I want my family snowed in? There were abandoned cars all over the gutter. How could you plow?”
He shows a phone photo of his one-way street clogged with abandoned cars parked at crazy angles. “I’d call for tow trucks,” he said. “There weren’t enough.”
“BK 11 has about 50 trucks,” Strongest No. 5 said. “About 25 got stuck. Know why? Inferior snow chains. They’d snap as soon as you tried to get traction.”
“The chains kept pulling the tires off my rims,” Strongest No. 1 said, displaying a phone photo of his crippled truck, a rear tire missing from the rim. “This is 2011, and the city can’t buy chains as good as they got 20 years ago?”
“How about the friggin’ shovels?” Strongest No. 3 said. “They come disassembled. You gotta put ‘em together. The handle into the blade, right? Except what? They didn’t have the bolts to fasten them.”
“Then, when your truck breaks down, you aren’t allowed to leave it,” says Strongest No. 4. “Guys on OT sitting in disabled trucks, not allowed to leave to eat or go to the bathroom. You call for a replacement. They don’t have anybody. Why? Forty fewer guys. If you leave when nature calls, you get written up for abandoning a city vehicle. And lose a day.”
They laugh about building a Porta Potti along Washington Cemetery out of an old bucket, shredded tires and assorted materials.
“You know the sanitation guy they photographed sleeping?” Strongest No. 4 said. “He dozed off after working 15 straight hours without food or sleep.”
“I worked 100 hours from Sunday to Sunday,” Strongest No. 5 said. “I don’t live in the neighborhood, so I slept in the garage. Some citizens cursed me, threatened me, photographed me. Others fed me hot dinners.”
“All my years on the job I never seen anything like this,” Strongest No. 3 said. “But we never had a perfect storm of fewer men, inferior equipment, 70-mph winds and a political failure to declare a snow emergency. . . . This was all about money.”
“Bloomberg is a CEO, but you can’t run a city like a corporation when lives are at stake,” Strongest No. 1 said.
“Does anyone really believe we wanted people to die? Hey, we live here! That could’ve been our mother or kid that died. It hurts us that we’re being blamed for this. I had one old guy throw a mini-snow blower at me because I plowed past his driveway.”
Strongest No. 1 said the city didn’t give the workers enough salt to do the streets and clear the area around fire hydrants.
“God forbid there’s a fire,” Strongest No. 2 said. “This is how the city saves money?”
What really makes them mad is the suggestion they pulled a slowdown over personnel cuts and middle-management demotions.
“Are you kiddin’ me,” Strongest No. 4 roared, slapping the table. “We don’t care about management on a good day, never mind during a blizzard. We know how to do this better than anybody in the world. We just didn’t have enough men, the right equipment and the political leadership we needed.”
(Source: NY Daily News)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
8 Responses
Pass the tissues.
Sorry I don’t buy their story. I’m sure some of it is true but somehow they did plow Brooklyn by Friday so obviously the inferior equipment works. There is a certain attitude that city union workers have when there are layoffs which is to sit back & complain about the reduced work force instead of working a little harder to get the job done. Those particular fellows quoted in the article may actually be good guys who work hard but the other few thousand of their co workers, supervisors and managers failed the people of Brooklyn big time. Blaming the layoff of 400 workers citywide is a lame excuse. 80 less workers for the borough of Brooklyn should not have caused such a slowdown. The arrogant Mayor should apologize & I hope the citizens won’t forget his failure & attitude if and when he runs for president.
OK, but that doesn’t explain the seemingly deliberate damage to property as reported in other stories.
why do you need political leadership to plow a street? i understand the money and budget cuts. Unless its all the same thing.
The biggest proof that they are right is that today’s news papers report that the office of city hall don’t want to releas who was in charge from the goverment at the time of the blizart. I resr my case.
I don’t buy it. it took them a good week to come up with this story. If this was true they would have “fought back” immediately!
are they saying that manhattan has better equipment and more men?
I plowed for 20 years and never had a tire come off from the chains. It is a story and not good at that if you have experience