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The city pathetically handled a whopping, 20-inch Christmas-weekend blizzard, but a resolved Mayor Bloomberg says he’s pulling out all the stops for today’s light dusting.
Still facing heavy criticism for the botched cleanup effort, Bloomberg and his Department of Sanitation boss scrambled yesterday to at least give the appearance they’re prepared for the mild storm.
The mayor yesterday replaced two underperforming Sanitation bosses and vowed the department would keep track via GPS of plowers and salters tackling today’s predicted 4-inch snow accumulation.
Meanwhile, NYC Transit announced it will set up a pair of command centers — one for buses in Brooklyn and a Manhattan center for rail services. The Big Apple’s mass-transit system was virtually paralyzed during the blizzard.
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The overhaul came as more details emerged about last week’s botched cleanup effort.
* Sources said Bloomberg sacked the head of EMS Wednesday because the mayor was not given information fast enough during the blizzard — and looked foolish when reporters grilled him about a 1,300-call backlog for 911 he knew nothing about. “That’s a real problem,” said a City Hall source.
* The Post learned the Office of Emergency Management denied an FDNY request to declare a snow emergency at 3 a.m. on Dec. 27, which would have banned cars from parking on main roads and driving at all, an official said. A fire spokesman disputed that account.
* Federal investigators continued to look for whistleblowers to detail an alleged slowdown ordered by Sanitation bosses to protest budget cuts.
Bloomberg, slammed with questions at City Hall yesterday, did his best to defend a failed response to the blizzard that has left him politically damaged. He insisted that this time, “We plan to do a great job.”
Bloomberg confidently detailed his administration’s plans for preliminary fixes to the Sanitation Department’s snow-clearing operations.
He said two senior commanders in hard-hit south Brooklyn were reassigned — and three of that area’s sanitation zones had been transferred to the control of bosses in north Brooklyn.
That way, officials said, bosses can keep better control of plowing operations in a borough that was clogged for days after the storm ended.
Bloomberg refused to say if a further staff shake-up loomed.
The biggest head to roll came when Bloomberg blitzed the head of New York’s embattled EMS — one of a list of city agencies that all but collapsed under the weight of the snow.
Bloomberg, who was never a fan of Chief John Peruggia, was furious with him for not properly briefing Hizzoner on problems with the city’s emergency-response system.
The mayor was instead slapped with that problem during a press conference shortly after the snow stopped falling on Dec. 27, when he was grilled about the 1,300-call backlog at EMS.
He was confused by the question and then sidestepped it. He later incorrectly said things were “pretty much back to normal.”
Bloomberg told aides he was blindsided because Peruggia had not briefed him on the backlog — which was confirmed by city officials later that day, sources said.
Since the storm, EMS has come under fire — along with Sanitation Department plow crews — after ambulances were unable to get patients to hospitals and kept getting stuck in the snow.
The Medical Examiner’s Office is still reviewing cases to determine how many deaths were related to weather delays. And federal and state prosecutors have launched probes to determine whether there was any criminal wrongdoing linked to blizzard-related deaths.
Neither Peruggia nor Bloomberg’s spokesman would comment on the mayor’s reason for canning the EMS boss. At yesterday’s press conference, the mayor declined to explain why the EMS chief was the first and highest-profile official to take the fall.
“Last week’s storm exposed problems with the way it’s operated, and I decided to make changes to EMS,” Bloomberg said. “I decided this city would be better off with a different person in charge.”
Pat Bahnken, head of the EMS union, was upset by the mayor’s comments.
“My members saved a lot of lives,” Bahnken said. “From the dispatchers to the workers in the field, they all put out a heroic effort. To imply anything else is simply an attempt to divert attention from where the real mistakes were made.”
Meanwhile, Sanitation Department workers yesterday hoped their response would be better than last week.
“We should be ready,” said an employee at the department’s garage in Harlem.
As for transit, NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast announced that salting, de-icing, sweeping and snow-blowing equipment has been deployed in the subways.
He said bus tires were being outfitted with chains and salt-spreaders and payloaders were ready to assist buses that might get stranded in the snow like last week.
“We want to make sure we do this one right,” he said.
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Bill Sanderson and David Seifman