Fort Lee Digs Out, Downtown Area Streets Cleared

Snow was piled high along Fort Lee's downtown roadways Tuesday morning in the aftermath of Sunday and Monday's blizzard, which dumped more than 20 inches of snow on the area. But borough officials say that while the major streets in the downtown area have been cleared, the real work of digging out is only just beginning.

Now that most of the borough's major thoroughfares and downtown sidewalks are in good shape, the Department of Public Works is turning its attention to tertiary and more heavily travelled side streets. DPW officials said Tuesday morning that their immediate priority was helping the elderly, many of whom have visiting nurses needing to get in or doctors' appointments they need to get out for.

"We're trying to help them clear out their driveways, so they can get out and clear out the bigger side streets that more people use," said Ricky Figueroa of DPW. "We're trying to stay on top of that."

"The tertiary streets we're getting to now," said Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich. "We're opening up a lot more of the public buildings, and we're dealing with it."

Sokolich lauded DPW and General Services for their efforts in the wake of the storm, noting that in years past, the borough engaged the services of private contractors to handle what DPW couldn't handle, costing "tens and tens of thousands of dollars." He added that one storm in recent memory "was probably two or three hundred thousand dollars."

"We don't have that money anymore; We're not doing that anymore," Sokilich said. "So we're calling on our employees to do that much more—12, 15-hour shifts. We're staggering the guys. Everybody's required to report and come to work, and they have been. I think they've handled it very well. I'm happy to report that we've not had to expend one dollar on outside contractors. We did it all in house, which is not generally the case in most other towns."

Sokolich said he's had the opportunity to travel to other towns in the area since the storm hit and therefore the chance to compare response efforts.

"I can tell you that Fort Lee [is] in as good a shape, if not the best shape, of most towns in the area," he said.

Sokolich also rode along in one of DPW's trucks in the wee hours of Sunday night during the peak of the blizzard "just to get a taste of what the conditions were out there. And they were bad. I mean they were really, really bad," he said.

"It was actually good that the brunt of the storm occurred in the very, very late hours of the morning, because there weren't a lot of drivers, which gave us a chance to get a little bit ahead of the game," Sokolich said.

Meanwhile, Figueroa said DPW's phones have been ringing off the hook since the storm ended Monday, and that his department is doing as much as it can to get streets and sidewalks cleared as quickly as possible.

"We don't have enough guys, and we're working on whatever we can as fast as we can," Figueroa said. "But it's going to take time."

Figueroa said he didn't have an estimate on just how much time it's going to take to get the borough's streets cleared, saying only, "It's going to be a while."

The Fort Lee Police Department is reporting no major accidents in the borough as a result of the storm.