City Must Answer For NYC Snowstorm Chaos, Pols Say

NEW YORK — New York City officials have an avalanche of questions for the Department of Sanitation after Thursday's snowstorm crippled evening commutes.

Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged a "full operational review" of how the city dealt with the unexpectedly nasty storm, which dropped six inches of snow on Central Park.

The City Council will use its oversight powers to make sure that review is thorough, transparent and produces answers about what went wrong, Speaker Corey Johnson said.

"Yesterday something happened which shouldn’t have happened, and we want to get to the bottom of what that is to make sure it doesn’t happen again over the course of this winter season," Johnson, a Democrat, told reporters on a Chelsea sidewalk littered with fallen tree branches.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer also peppered the Sanitation Department with questions about its preparations for, and response to, the snowfall in a Friday letter.

Stringer demanded to know how many vehicles and staff the department deployed, which forecasts it consults, how long it takes to send out salt spreaders and plows, and what changes it will make before the next storm.

"In a city that routinely experiences heavy snowfalls each year, there is no reason that six inches of snow should have caused problems as severe as school buses taking more than 10 hours to bring kids home," Stringer, a Democrat, wrote to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia — who's pulling double duty as the city's lead-poinsoning czar.

De Blasio maintained his stance that a "perfect storm" of unfortunate circumstances caused the mess. The city initially expected one or two inches of snow but didn't learn more was coming until early Thursday afternoon, he said.

"I'm sure there were some ways to pivot, but I'm trying to be honest with you — I think in essence, the die was cast," the Democratic mayor said.

The Sanitation Department deployed all of its salt spreaders and up to about 700 of its roughly 1,600 plows, Garcia said. Snow-clearing equipment got mired in the horrific traffic — especially in The Bronx, Upper Manhattan and Staten Island — and broken tree branches blocked several streets, a Sanitation Department spokeswoman said.

The prime culprit in the chaos was a 20-car pile-up on the George Washington Bridge that shuttered its outbound lanes, which caused problems that "cascade(d)" onto other highways, de Blasio said.

"It hit at a very, very challenging time, right at rush hour," Garcia said. "It was coming down at two inches an hour, so it was at blizzard strength right at the moment when it was hitting."

Gridlock in the city trapped vehicles and school buses in traffic for hours on end; some kids didn't get home until after midnight. The Department of Education canceled Friday's after-school programs and field trips in the middle of the morning, angering some parents.

Johnson said the city should "overly communicate" with the public both before and during storms. That didn't happen on Thursday, despite the fact that the mayor has done it before, he said.

The Sanitation Department needs to answer when its equipment was deployed and where it was sent, Johnson said. But he indicated the Council would question other agencies too.

"We're going to have questions for the NYPD, we're going to have questions for the MTA, we're going to have questions for (the Department of Transportation), for Sanitation, for the Department of Education," Johnson said.

"When a storm hits, it needs to be — and it always has been in the past — a multi-agency coordinated effort and approach to deal with the issues and be able to understand, when you make one decision, how does it effect everything else."

(Lead image: City Council Speaker Corey Johnson addresses reporters in Chelsea on Friday. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)