New Yorkers endured a crippled transit system, completely overwhelmed emergency responders and unpassable roadways yesterday after one of the city’s worst blizzards ever dumped a staggering 20 inches of snow.
Abandoned vehicles and buses littered highways and main drags — and ambulances couldn’t make it out to calls that stacked up well past 1,000 at one point. Virtually all modes of transportation — from air travel to the subways — left people stranded.
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“A lot of snow everyplace. It was a very heavy snowfall, and, as you know, it was accompanied by intense winds,” Mayor Bloomberg said.
Still, he tried to convince the public all was well, despite the city’s $20 million snow-removal bill.
“This city is going on. It’s a day like every other day,” Bloomberg said, suggesting people go out and shop or take in a Broadway show. “There’s no reason [for] everybody to panic.”
Anyone who spent time outside would disagree.
The storm, which began pummeling the area Sunday morning, didn’t let up until early yesterday. Howling winds created mountains of snow in streets, on sidewalks and along elevated subway lines.
With stranded cars blocking roadways and resources spread thin, the FDNY at one point had a 1,400-call backlog.
One FDNY unit was delayed for 14 minutes while trying to reach a five-alarm fire in Elmhurst, Queens, said Al Hagan, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.
Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens) last night posted a message to the mayor on his Facebook page:
“Our hospitals are short-staffed, and our streets are impassable. Our side streets haven’t seen one plow ALL DAY. Stop telling Manhattan to go see a Broadway play, and get the outer boros plowed, NOW!! Then give us the full explanation we deserve as to why we were forgotten.”
Virtually every line in the subway system experienced either delays or shutdowns for the morning rush, leaving untold thousands of furious commuters scrambling for a way to work.
The problems included elevated platforms covered in snow that drifted well over two feet in certain areas, like Astoria, Queens.
The worst of the subway problems came overnight Sunday at the height of the storm as an A train bound for the Rockaways got stuck for nearly seven hours near Kennedy Airport.
“Ultimately, we did get people to Euclid Avenue,” MTA Chairman Jay Walder said, explaining that a diesel locomotive had been dug out at the yard and sent to push the dead train.
“We still don’t have service to the Rockaways, and I don’t know when we’ll have that back,” Walder said.
Around the city and in Nassau County, stranded buses were the hallmark of the blizzard. At one point yesterday, nearly 1,029 buses were trapped in snow and ice in the five boroughs — nearly a quarter of the system’s total fleet.
The trouble extended to suburban rail lines as well.
“It was a perfect storm of problems,” said Joe Calderone, spokesman for the Long Island Rail Road. “It’s going to take us time to recover.”
The LIRR suspended service on its entire system at about 10:20 p.m. Sunday, and it wasn’t until yesterday evening that service slowly started crawling back.
Hundreds of passengers were stuck all day and all night at Penn Station, including some who slept on parked trains.
“We’ve been waiting for the LIRR for 12 hours and counting,” said Elizabeth Mercado, 39, from Brentwood, LI. “We had come in to the city for the day [Sunday],
but our train at 8 p.m. was canceled and we ended up sleeping here on the trains they opened up. It was a little weird, and not too comfortable.”
At Kennedy Airport, Albright College professor Rebecca Smith, was trying to escort nine people to Ecuador for a sociology course. “We had to scavenge blankets from other passengers,” she complained.
Metro-North passengers fared better as their lines — also suspended Sunday night — were slowly revived yesterday afternoon. But at Grand Central Terminal, chaos and confusion were the rule.
“I was in the office, and the MTA said they resumed service,”
said David Seid of Ossining.
“Then I headed to Grand Central, and it’s suspended again. We’ve had snow before. They used to plow. Why aren’t they ready for this?”
Even with temperatures expected to rise into the 40s, it could still take days for the snow levels to come down significantly.
The warmer temperatures will come as relief to the countless fliers stuck at the area’s three major airports last night, where flights were expected to begin landing last night.
La Guardia technically reopened at around 4 p.m., but there were no flights in or out for hours. Kennedy Airport opened at 6 p.m. for departures and got its first arriving flight shortly before 7 p.m.
“For the last four nights, I’ve been at a nice hotel on Central Park South, and now I’m a cot person,” Nina Hustus, 51, a claims adjuster, said at La Guardia, from where she was supposed to fly to Dallas yesterday.
“I’m extremely confused as to why the airlines handled things so poorly. Everyone knew this was coming.”
The transit and snow-cleanup problems led to immediate calls for hearings and inquiries from city officials.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton, Philip Messing, Rebecca Harshbarger and Kirstan Conley