nothin Biggest Blizzard In A Century; Drivers… | New Haven Independent

Biggest Blizzard In A Century; Drivers Defying Ban Hinder City’s Efforts To Plow The Streets

Allan Appel Photo

Carl Z.’s truck got stuck on Poplar during a rescue mission.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Orange Street. All roads were closed to vehicles Saturday; sleds exempt.

(Updated) Don’t expect your street to get plowed Sunday.

And if people keep trying to drive around town, it could take longer.

Meanwhile, it’s official — New Haven got hit with the biggest blizzard in a century.

That was the word Saturday evening as city officials raced to get a handle on the worst blizzard in a least a generation — the dumping of 34 inches by Winter Storm Nemo.

Clearing the historic snowfall could take the city a week.

School is officially canceled Monday, and probably will be canceled beyond that.

The 34 inches that fell overnight Friday exceeded the 1978 blizzard, city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said Saturday night.

This is a storm we haven’t seen in 100 years,” he said.

Because snow fell so fast between 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. Friday — 8 inches in all — the city had to ditch its plan to plow continuously. Instead, it had to dig out 9 fire engines, 27 cop cars, and 15 ambulances that got stuck.

Saturday the city succeeded in making the highest-priority roads —like Howard Avenue, Grand Avenue, Whalley, Dixwell, Townsend, Church & Chapel — passable for emergency vehicles.

Now the effort turns to the next level of high-traffic streets. The goal, according to Smuts, is to enable fire trucks and ambulances to get close enough to all streets in town, even unplowed streets, to handle emergencies.

In Westville and Edgewood, for example, that means clearing Alden, Chapel, Edgewood, Yale and Willard, Smuts said. The crews aren’t yet clearing both lanes of two-lane roads. Just one lane to get the fire trucks through if needed. They’ll return for the second lane in the next stage of the clearing.

As occurred the night before, while torrents of blinding snow dropped on the city, crews were tied up too often trying to get stuck and abandoned cars out of the streets. Officials continued pleading with people Saturday night not to drive.

All these cars that were abandoned in the street. It’s holding us up,” Mayor John DeStefano said in a phone conversation from Dublin, Ireland, where he’s been attending a Council of Europe meeting on immigration. People are getting out and driving. They’re getting stuck at intersections and they’re getting stuck at snow banks. They’re delaying the clean-up because they are getting stuck in large numbers.

Don’t drive, he said. Not Saturday night. Not Sunday. Period. Most roads will not be cleared enough for car traffic. Many won’t be plowed at all yet. It may take days for some side roads to be cleared.

We’ll be mapping out where we stand tomorrow. We’ll be making judgments late afternoon tomorrow about how long we think it’s going to take us to clean the city,” DeStefano said.

He said he expects to fly back home Sunday. Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez has been the acting mayor in his absence. Friday afternoon Perez signed a document sharing with CAO Smuts the power to make decisions during the blizzard.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy lifted a statewide travel ban at 4 p.m. However, all city roads remain closed until further notice, according to Rick Fontana, the city’s deputy emergency operations director.

Even if you think you might be able to make it,” Smuts said, don’t leave home in your car. He said the snow is so thick that a National Guard Humvee got stuck in it this morning.

Don’t leave your house unless you are a plow driver or a tow truck driver who needs to get to work,” Smuts urged.

Abandoned cars included one owned by Axel Tupac. He was driving his small four-wheel-drive home down Poplar just off Grand Avenue at 9 p.m. Friday. He called his boss, Carl Z. (pictured at the top of the story), at Total Grounds Care, a landscaping company based in Hamden. When his boss arrived with his truck, the truck got stuck, too. Both vehicles remained immobilized until midday Saturday.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported, thankfully, through Saturday evening, according to Smuts.

Gov: Roads Closed All Day Saturday

At an 11 a.m. press conference Saturday, Malloy called the blizzard a record-breaking storm” with snowfalls reported as high as 38 inches. It’s left roads impassable, and cars and snowplows stuck, all over Connecticut, he said. That’s what forced the travel ban, he said.

Right now, our main priority is to clear roads,” Malloy said.

That will be much easier if the roads are empty of everything except plows and emergency vehicles.

We certainly don’t want to see other people get caught in snow drifts,” Malloy said. So, please stay home.”

One fatality was reported during the storm, he said: A Prospect woman in her early 80s was struck and killed by a car while out using a snowblower Saturday night. Malloy said there have been reported cases of hypothermia and other cold-related ailments from people who were stranded in the storm.

We are seeing some of that, and obviously there is a big concern about how cold it is going to be tonight,” Malloy said.

The state is working with cities and towns to make sure there are shelters open, and transportation available, particularly for the elderly, he said.

Malloy said state residents need to stay home, and be patient, as they wait for the plows to clear the massive snowfall.

This is going to go on for a number of days,” he said. This will not all be done today.”

Dublin Calls

Saturday morning, Mayor John DeStefano phoned in from Dublin Saturday morning to urge New Haveners to stay off the roads.

DeStefano issued a recorded phone call through the city’s reverse-911 system Saturday morning from Ireland, where he has been since Tuesday at a National League of Cities conference.

He urged New Haveners to stay home” so that the city can focus on clearing roads near the city’s two hospitals as well as main arterials for emergency vehicles.

Do not go out on the roads the entire day Saturday,” he urged.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Orange Street circa midnight.

The National Guard arrived at 2:30 a.m. to help New Haven’s cleanup efforts.

In addition to the Malloy-ordered closing of roads, CT Transit buses are not running Saturday and Metro-North train service has been suspended.

Police will be pulling over any non-emergency cars they see driving in New Haven and challenging” them, DeStefano said. You’ll be doing neither yourself or our ability to restore services any good” to drive.

The city will attempt to respond to life-threatening 911 calls, but because of the condition of the roads, we will not be able to respond to every 911 call that we get.”

There will be no parking downtown for the foreseeable future.” The city won’t be able to clear all the roads in the city until later this week, DeStefano said.

He offered these tips:

• Clear your CO vents to prevent carbon monoxide buildup in your home. 
• Clear snow from fire hydrants located near your property
• If your sidewalk includes a curb ramp (at a street intersection), please shovel that so the sidewalk is passable for wheelchair use
• Check on your neighbors (in person, or through SeeClickFix)
• Call the non-emergency line at 203 – 946-8221 for storm-related questions.

Humphrey Street.

While thousands of people lost power throughout the state, New Haven dodged the bullet. There were no power outages as of 8 a.m. in New Haven, DeStefano reported.

While he’s still in Dublin, DeStefano stopped his planned activities in Ireland” on Friday and is working remotely on storm cleanup,” reported his spokeswoman, Anna Mariotti, Saturday morning.

Get Some Rest”

City officials, led by CAO Smuts, have been working out of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), the city’s underground bunker at 200 Orange St., to coordinate a response to the storm, just as they did during emergency weather events known as Sandy and Irene.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Inside the EOC Friday afternoon.

Rick Fontana, deputy director of emergency management, briefed city officials during a meeting at 2 p.m. Friday. He read the latest weather report: Temperatures were about to drop below freezing. Winds were set to pick up to 15 to 25 miles per hour, creating a blizzard with up to five inches of snow per hour and zero visibility during the next 24 hours.

Tides were to surge between 2 and 4 feet over normal levels, causing floods of 1 to 3 feet in low-lying areas.

This is going to be a significant storm,” Fontana warned.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Chris Coyne walked backwards all the way across the Green to shield his face from the driving snow.

Fontana’s advice to New Haveners: Don’t go out on the road. Stay in the house.”

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ordered all cars off highways as of 4 p.m. Friday.

Smuts urged staff who aren’t involved in plowing to get some rest and make arrangements to return to the EOC at 9 a.m. Saturday.

For the time being, all was calm.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Right now, it’s business as usual,” reported Doug Arndt (pictured), New Haven’s new public works chief. He said his crews have suffered no breakdowns. In general, the city will begin plowing streets after 2 to 3 inches of snowfall.

There’s not much going on yet. We’re just waiting,” reported United Illuminating’s Melissa Gilbert. She said the company is bracing for a power outage of up to 32,000 customers, or 10 percent of its territory, which includes New Haven and surrounding towns.

The fire department will be checking flood-prone areas during high tides, which are set to fall at 9:40 p.m. and 10 a.m., according to Smuts. Smuts led the EOC meeting in the absence of Mayor John DeStefano, who is in Ireland.

Melissa Bailey Photo

Angie Mack and Ciara Simmons took a break from their shift at Dunkin’ Donuts. They’re set to return to work Saturday at 8 a.m.

As he monitored developments from the EOC in the basement of the 200 Orange St. municipal office building earlier Friday, Smuts detailed the city’s plan for tackling the storm, the latest in a series of big weather events” for which he’s helped oversee the government response since he assumed his post six years ago.

The Plows

Melissa Bailey Photo

The city had 32 drivers — five contractors, the rest public-works employees — start a 14-hour shift at 5 a.m. Friday. They took the plows on the road: 21 big trucks known as Class 8s,” 11 smaller 550s, the type that plow a grocery store parking lot. Bigger than a normal pick-up you see on the street, but not like a dump-truck size,” Smuts said.

At first the crews are dumping a sand-liquid mix on the streets, especially at intersections and hills, to provide traction and to help it melt.”

Once the snow starts accumulating on the streets, we put our plows down and start pushing back,” Smuts said. The stuff is going to be coming fast and heavy. We don’t want to fall behind.”

The first crew is working a 14-hour shift. At 7 p.m. another crew of 32 drivers is scheduled to replace it. From then on, the plan is to have each crew rotate on 12-hour shifts through the duration of the storm clean-up.

Smuts said they’ll probably just keep plowing all of New Haven’s 225 miles of road straight through. If there is actually white-out conditions where they really can’t see at all we might suspend plowing. That’s very unusual, but they are talking about the potential of that later tonight.”

Each Class 8 plow driver is assigned about 10 to 11 miles of road. They hit the major thoroughfares more often than the side streets. But their assignment does cover all roads in their area except the cul-de-sacs and other streets too narrow to maneuver their plows. The 550s” tackle those smaller stretches. They are expected to get to each and every small spot at least once per shift and hopefully more than that,” Smuts said.

Back in January of 2011 Mother Nature whacked New Haven with 42 inches of snow in a series of debilitating storms whose ferocity caught the city by surprise. From Fair Haven to Dixwell to West Rock, neighbors complained about a poor plowing response. (Read about that here.) People living on some small streets like Westville’s Richmond Avenue and Burton appealed for plows to remember them. In East Rock, some narrow streets were unplowable — because people hadn’t moved their cars. Out of that contentious experience, officials and neighbors realized that everyone wanted more advance notice and advance towing to prevent the problem rather than chase after it later.

Which is one reason that …

Parking, Towing, Trees & Floods

… the city plans to start towing cars mid-day Friday if they’re parked less than 25 feet away from intersections, fire hydrants or bus stops. Intersections are a big issue, particularly in dense neighborhoods like the Hill and East Rock,” Smuts said.

The city has not declared any parking bans for Friday during the day. A downtown parking ban starts at 10 p.m. However Smuts advises people to move their cars off downtown streets earlier than that, because they might have more trouble later on. Click here for details on the downtown ban.

You can park for free at numerous downtown and Wooster Square lots and garages. Click here for details.

Meanwhile, the city has put its tree crews on call. As soon as the storm stops, the crews will swing into action to remove downed trees and branches, Smuts said.

The high winds are expected to lead to some water surges along the coast. We’re keeping an eye on that,” Smuts said. The city has stationed sawhorses by streets that often flood, like Townsend and Dean in the Cove and Hemingway in the Heights.

The Homeless

Homeless shelters, which usually close during the day, are staying open Friday. Outreach workers are on the street looking for people to bring in from the wet and the cold.

Unlike with Superstorm Sandy, the city is not at this point planning to open an overflow shelter of its own for displaced families, Smuts said. But it has a contingency plan to do so in the case of significant power outages, he said.

In the meantime, anyone with questions or concerns can call the EOC at 203 – 946-8221. Eight people are already working there Friday morning, with two dedicated to handling the phones.

Parker Collins Photo



Gwyneth K. Shaw and Allan Appel contributed reporting.

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