Can You Hear Me Now?? Verizon dropped 10,000 emergency calls during January snowstorm in Maryland, FCC finds it 'alarming'

Uh oh, Verizon's got itself into a bit of hot water with the old FCC. An outage during a snowstorm last month has reportedly resulted in a whopping 10,000 calls to 911 not being connected by the big red carrier. That would be bad enough in itself, but the less-than-pleased Communications Commission also notes that the emergency services that missed out on these calls were not alerted to the connectivity failure -- in fact, Maryland's Montgomery County officers were the ones to inform Verizon of the fault it was having, which was then promptly repaired within 15 minutes. The FCC is now curtly asking the network to check its entire footprint for similar vulnerabilities -- as the January events were apparently "not unique" -- and to propose remedial actions and monitoring systems to prevent it happening again.

Trash Mounts as Snow Melts - City Begins Spotty Pickup; Rat Warning

The snow is sooo yesterday.

The city resumed limited garbage collection on Monday for the first time following the post-Christmas blizzard, but some elected officials and residents have already begun complaining that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration has allowed too much refuse to pile up.

On streets throughout the city, the mounds of snow have been replaced with mounds of garbage, creating a new highly visible eyesore for the mayor.

"Today we started an aggressive approach to try to clean up the waste that has built up over the last week due to the snow storm," said John Doherty, commissioner of the Department of Sanitation, at a news conference in Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.

"During the course of the week, as we make our rounds, some people will get two pick-ups where they normally receive three, and some other people may get either one or two pick-ups where they receive twice-a-week collection," he said.

Mr. Doherty said he hopes the city will be "pretty well normal" on garbage collection by week's end, and he noted that a week is the longest the city has ever gone without collecting garbage. The city won't resume recycling collection until the weekend, at the earliest, he said.

"We ask the public to please get their garbage out in an area where the sanitation workers can get it easily so that we can move along," he said. "We've got a lot of work out there."

The commissioner estimated there was probably a little less than 50,000 tons of garbage waiting to be collected. But the cold temperatures mean the mounds of garbage, though unsightly, shouldn't pose a major health risk, Mr. Doherty said.

Although the mayor has taken responsibility for the slow snow cleanup, calling it inadequate and unacceptable, Mr. Doherty continued to defend his employees. "From my point of view they did an A-plus. From the public's point of view, we did probably a C-minus," he said.

City Council Member Letitia James, chairwoman of the council's Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, criticized Mr. Doherty for moving forward with limited garbage pick-up.

A pile of trash sits on the curb outside an apartment complex in Queens on Sunday.

"Because the snow has melted thanks to Mother Nature," Ms. James said, "we should actually be doing full sanitation pick-up because the garbage here in central Brooklyn is mounting and we have rodent problems and raccoon problems."

In October, City Hall unveiled plans to demote 100 supervisors at the Department of Sanitation in hopes of saving money and boosting the number of sanitation workers available to pick up trash and plow snow. On Monday, Jason Post, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, confirmed that 55 of those possible demotions have been suspended.

"We are hopeful we can negotiate savings with the union," Mr. Post said. The other 45 have already been demoted.

These demotions fueled intense anger at the department. Both Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Doherty said they do not believe there was any deliberate effort by sanitation workers to botch the city's response to the blizzard, but the mayor has nevertheless ordered an investigation

Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city's Department of Investigation, which is probing the possibility of a deliberate slowdown during the blizzard, said her agency has been working "24/7" on the probe.

The Sanitation Department has 400 fewer employees than it had two years ago. While the head of the sanitation union has suggested that the work force reduction contributed to the city's sluggish response to the storm, the mayor and Mr. Doherty have insisted that's not the case.

Credit : WSJ

Criticism of Mayor Mounts

In Chinatown on Thursday, pedestrians snake through a narrow path cut through the snowbank and the garbage piles up days after the blizzard

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday his administration fulfilled a promise to plow every city street, but elected officials and others insisted some streets never saw a plow before the 7 a.m. deadline, marking another setback for the beleaguered mayor.

Mr. Bloomberg, who on Friday completes the first year of his third four-year term as the chief executive of the nation's largest city, has been besieged by a number of embarrassing episodes in recent weeks, with some saying he's endangering his image as an expert manager.

Mayor Bloomberg speaks with Assistant Borough Police Chief to South Brooklyn Joseph Fox on Fillmore Avenue in Marine Park, Brooklyn, during the Mayor's post-snowstorm tour of the outer boroughs

Council Member Debi Rose of Staten Island, who met with the mayor during his tour Thursday of every borough outside Manhattan, said she believes the city's sluggish response to the post-Christmas blizzard has dealt a serious blow to the mayor's reputation.

"This could be the straw that breaks New York City's back in terms of how well they think, a good job, the mayor has done," said Ms. Rose.

"I was stranded for three days myself. I could not get out," Ms. Rose said. "Something went drastically wrong with this snow removal."

The mayor said the administration plans to conduct a full investigation into the city's response to the storm. That probe will include examining allegations that disgruntled members of the Department of Sanitation deliberately slowed the snow removal as a protest.

Armed with a movie camera and tripod, Queens resident Jamie Stuart filmed scenes from the Christmas blizzard that clobbered New York City. His film, "Idiot With a Tripod," pays tribute to Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic "Man With a Movie Camera."

The mayor and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty on Thursday said they don't believe there was a coordinated slowdown.

"I don't think it took place but we're going to do an investigation to make sure that it didn't," Mr. Bloomberg said. "It would be an outrage if it took place. But I just don't know."

During a news conference in Queens, Mr. Bloomberg again conceded that his administration's response to the storm was both "inadequate and unacceptable," an about-face from his defiant stance during the early portion of the cleanup effort.

"Clearly the response to this storm has not met our standards or the standards that New Yorkers have come to expect from us," he said. "The long delays in plowing some of the city streets should not have happened. We're not making excuses."

At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg said the city met its commitment to plow every street, except those blocked by stranded vehicles, at least once by 7 a.m. Thursday.

The mayor estimated there were about a dozen of those blocked roads in one section of Brooklyn and a handful of others elsewhere.

Some city residents and elected officials disputed the mayor's contention.

"We still have quite a few blocks that have not been touched, still have quite a few blocks," Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said.

He added: "There is no excuse for this—absolutely no excuse. This was an outrage."

Moments after the mayor finished speaking, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, who hadn't been invited to speak, approached the lectern to dispute the mayor's remarks.

A newborn baby died after the blizzard in Brooklyn, New York, as his mother waited for an ambulance to arrive. Video courtesy of Fox News.

"Most of the roads, even where I live, there's still about four inches right where the cars and everything go," she said. During the last several days, she said, residents from nearly every section of Queens called her office, saying, "Where is the plow? Where is the plow?"

For the mayor, the poor response to the snow storm comes on the heels of federal prosecutors arresting six people on charges of stealing $80 million allocated to the city's long-delayed computerized payroll system, known as CityTime.

The mayor's critics have lambasted Mr. Bloomberg for failing to police the CityTime project. In recent months, the mayor has also taken heat from some for the city's uptick in homicides, his plans to close fire companies, the secretive process for selecting the new schools chancellor and for failing to stand up enough for the working poor.

"It's been all malaise, no magic, thus far in the third term, with a record number of working poor New Yorkers now relying on food stamps and feeling invisible to and forgotten by this mayor," said Dan Morris, a spokesman for a coalition seeking a living wage law.

A mayoral spokesman, Stu Loeser, responded by saying: "We're proud that New York City led the nation for job creation over the last year, often creating jobs at twice the rate of the rest of the country."

Mr. Bloomberg said on Thursday he believes his campaign to seek a third term was the right decision for both him and the city.

"One of the reasons I wanted to run again was that we're going to be going through some very difficult times and it's never easy to go through difficult times," he said. "Bad times require a dedication and a commitment and a desire to make sure that this city comes through."

The mayor said he's more committed than ever to lead the city. While he accepted some responsibility for some of the administration's shortcomings, he said, "There's an awful lot of good numbers out there, as well."

Mr. Markowitz, who supported the mayor's bid for a third term, said "this is not the shining moment" for Mr. Bloomberg.

"But in anyone's life, you have ups and downs," Mr. Markowitz said. "He'll be up again."

Flights at J.F.K. Sit on Tarmac for Hours

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At least 28 flights, carrying thousands of passengers, became stranded on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy International Airport, one for close to 11 grueling hours, in the aftermath of this week’s paralyzing blizzard, officials said. The flights had one thing in common: they all began outside the United States.

This year, federal officials enacted a rule that penalizes airlines with hefty fines if planes are kept on the tarmac for more than three hours. But the new rule applies only to flights that begin and end in the United States.

The Transportation Department has been considering expanding the rule to include international flights and the strandings could force the agency to act.

“It was horrible,” said Shoham Elazar, 24, a dental student from Miami who arrived at Kennedy on Tuesday on Turkish Airlines Flight 1 from Istanbul. After a flight of about 10 hours, the plane sat on the tarmac for more than six hours before it could unload.

“After they announced it would be another hour and a half after the original hour and a half, it became pandemonium,” she said. “People were walking around, moaning, yelling. Children were screaming. People were complaining about children screaming.”

Kate Hanni, executive director of Flyers Rights, a passenger advocacy group that she formed after she was stuck for many hours on a tarmac in 2006, said, “This J.F.K. event, I’m almost certain, will be the tipping point.” After Ms. Hanni’s experience, a succession of similar, highly publicized ordeals led to the federal rule for domestic flights.

Ms. Hanni said that new federal rules should include an extension of the tarmac waiting penalties to international flights.

The effect of the domestic flight policy was starkly on display in the storm’s aftermath this week.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region’s three major airports, said four domestic flights of American Eagle airlines experienced delays of more than two hours waiting for a gate after arriving at La Guardia Airport on Tuesday. But in each case, he said, the passengers were unloaded from the planes by bus and taken to the terminal before the three-hour cutoff.

Mr. Coleman said that was not possible with the international flights at Kennedy because the passengers would need to be held in a secure area before going through immigration and customs. He said there was no suitable area at the airport for that.

The storm, which lasted throughout the day Sunday, dumped about 20 inches of snow at Kennedy and was accompanied by high winds. The airport shut down at 7 p.m. Sunday and did not reopen until 6 p.m. Monday. When it reopened, there was a long backlog of departing and arriving flights.

The international flights that became stranded on Tuesday had taken off without checking in advance to see if a gate would be available when they arrived, Mr. Coleman said. When they got on the ground in New York, there were no empty gates and the waiting began.

The Port Authority said that at least 28 international flights were stuck on the tarmac with long delays. That included Cathay Pacific Flight 840 from Hong Kong, which arrived at 2:15 a.m. Tuesday and was not able to get to a gate until about 1 p.m., nearly 11 hours later, Mr. Coleman said.

China Airlines Flight 12 from Taipei, which stopped over in Anchorage, arrived at Kennedy at 8:37 p.m. Tuesday and was not able to unload at a gate until 5:47 a.m. Wednesday, more than nine hours later. For passengers who started out in Taipei, the total duration of the trip, including the wait on the tarmac, was more than 25 hours.

Of the more than two dozen flights for which the Port Authority supplied information about the duration of the delays, all had waits of more than three hours, and 11 waited on the tarmac for more than six hours before reaching a gate. Mr. Coleman said that the authority was still compiling information and that the total number of stranded flights might increase. He said no flights that arrived on Wednesday had delays of longer than three hours, however.

The new tarmac waiting rule for domestic flights went into effect in late April. Olivia Alair, a Transportation Department spokeswoman, said there were 12 reported cases from May 1 to Sept. 30 of domestic flights that spent more than three hours on the tarmac. In that period a year ago, there were 535 flights with waits that exceeded three hours. Ms. Alair said the agency was investigating the 12 cases from this year and had not yet levied any fines. Airlines can be fined $27,500 a passenger for delays that violate the rule.

Bloomberg Says Plows Have Hit Every Street

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that snow plows had been down every street in the city except for those still blocked by stuck cars. He said that tow trucks would have those vehicles clear in the afternoon, and that plows would return to streets still buried.

But, as he did the day before, Mr. Bloomberg acknowledged that the city’s response was “inadequate and unacceptable” and said that his office would conduct an extensive review of what went wrong.

“We’re not making excuses,” he said. “The response to the storm has not met our standards or the standards that New Yorkers have come to expect from us.”

“When something goes wrong we find out why it went wrong and we roll up our sleeves and fix it,” he said. “The response to this snowstorm was inadequate and unacceptable.”

Mr. Bloomberg held a news conference in Queens after visits to Staten Island and Brooklyn where he spoke with residents about their snowbound plights. (He is to go to the Bronx in the afternoon.) He said that 1,600 plows and other equipment were clearing streets Thursday alongside 2,000 day laborers hired to shovel out bus stops and snow piles. The last of the 600 buses that were stuck have been freed, he added.

John J. Doherty, the sanitation commissioner, said he would look into claims that his department’s rank-and-file deliberately slowed down the cleanup work to protest budget cuts.

Mayor Says 911 Fell Short

As New Yorkers' fury intensified at the sight of streets still covered with snow, Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday acknowledged the city's response to the blizzard was "a lot worse" than previous storms and he voiced enormous dismay with the performance of the 911 system.

"My heart really does go out to those who experienced trauma and tragedy during the storm," said Mr. Bloomberg following reports of people who died waiting for ambulances to arrive. "We take our emergency life-saving responsibilities very seriously and I'm extremely dissatisfied with the way our emergency-response systems performed."

Scott McCartney looks back at the year in air travel and explains why it was a turbulent one for passengers, including the recent blizzard that paralyzed the East Coast and the Iceland volcano that grounded planes in Europe earlier in the year.

Mr. Bloomberg, speaking at a hardware store in the Bronx, said the city's 911 system became overwhelmed by the deluge of calls. On Monday, the city received more than 49,400 calls to 911, the sixth-largest volume in history, resulting that night in a backlog of roughly 1,700 calls to the NYPD and FDNY.

The mayor has ordered a comprehensive review of the 911 call-taking and dispatch functions, as some of the loved ones of those who died have taken to the airwaves to express their grief and anger at the city's sluggish response to the storm.

The administration is examining, among other things, whether ambulances should have taken different routes, and whether emergency personnel should have parked farther away from scenes and walked.

More than 48 hours after the last flake fell, a large swath of southern Brooklyn, parts of western Queens and areas of Staten Island remained covered with snow. Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said he expected to have "all the streets" in the city plowed by 7 a.m. Thursday.

As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the Sanitation Department said 100% of "primary" streets citywide had been plowed, 96% of "secondary" streets and 89% of "tertiary" streets.‬

The mayor, who has been the target of withering criticism from elected officials and residents, many of whom supported his controversial bid for a third term, conceded his administration failed to respond properly to the blizzard. The mayor speculated as to why—such as an unusually high number of stranded vehicles blocking roads and strong winds deterring snow removal—but he said he couldn't offer any firm conclusions yet.

"We did not do as good a job as we wanted to do or as the city has a right to expect," the mayor said. "I cannot tell you for sure why it was a lot worse this time than the other times."

Still, the mayor offered a strong defense of Mr. Doherty, insisting the commissioner will serve the remaining three years of the mayor's term. "This is the best sanitation commissioner this city has ever had. Period. Bar none," Mr. Bloomberg said.

The region's transportation network continued its slow return to normalcy Wednesday. Its three commuter railroads ran close to their usual service, and gaps in subway service caused by the snow were filled in.

There were just over 250 cancellations at the region's three airports, down from 1,000 Tuesday. The airports handle 3,000 flights on an average day.

"Things are slowly but surely getting back to normal," said Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Armed with a movie camera and tripod, Queens resident Jamie Stuart filmed scenes from the Christmas blizzard that clobbered New York City. His film, "Idiot With a Tripod", pays tribute to Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic "Man With a Movie Camera."

But snow-covered roads continued to slow buses. Many routes were detoured or delayed, especially in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

In Brooklyn, some major thoroughfares remained clogged, sections of sidewalks were covered with snow and garbage cans overflowed with rubbish. At Lincoln Place and Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights, cars began double parking along the snowbanks in the intersection.

Yellow-cab driver David Baker, who made it 50 feet from a garage before his cab became stuck, estimated he's lost $1,500 in earnings as a result of the storm. "I can't get through the street. Nobody is helping me," said Mr. Baker, who noted he's always supported the mayor. "Things happen, but he can do better than that."

At the corner of Cortelyou Road and Argyle Street in Ditmas Park, Liena Zagare, a 34-year-old local blogger, took it upon herself to shovel the crosswalk. She cleaned the crosswalk on both sides of the street five times in the past few days, she said. Argyle Street, a side road, was "plowed for the first time around lunchtime" Wednesday, she said.

"I got tired of watching people not be able to cross, stopping and staring sadly," she said.

Ditmas Park, which is served only by the B and Q trains, had been without subway service until Wednesday, and buses have been running "once in a blue moon," she said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, borrowing the mayor's words for the Board of Elections' botched handling of the September primary, has called the city's response to the storm a "royal screw-up."

In an interview on CNN, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said, "People are mad and they have every right to be mad and I really understand that anger....Almost every other storm in memory the city has done so much better than this."

Mr. Doherty said his department has set a "very high standard" with previous storm responses and "unfortunately" this time didn't meet that standard. But, he said, "I'm not here to make excuses right now."

The mayor promised to do better in the future.

"The results were not what we'd like them to be, but it has not been for lack of effort," he said. "We'll find what was different this time and try doing everything we can to make sure it's better next time."

During the Storm - 30 Hours' Wait for Ambulance

More than 24 hours after a blizzard dropped its last bit of snow, many New Yorkers struck by medical emergencies endured excruciating hours waiting for help to arrive.

When it did, ambulances trapped by snow had to park blocks away from medical victims stranded on residential streets yet to be plowed. And paramedics hauled victims over snowbanks and long stretches of slushy streets.

One of the most treacherous areas was South Brooklyn.

Dominick Caratozzolo, 63 years old, of Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge, suffered an apparent heart attack on Monday morning and died before paramedics arrived, more than 3 ½ hours later. Fire officials said a 911 call was placed from his apartment at 8:09 a.m. Firefighters arrived at 9:40 a.m, and emergency responders showed up at 11:42 a.m., officials said. The patient was declared dead at the scene.

Joseph Lupio, whose brother-in-law Dominick Caratozzolo died from a apparent heart attack Monday before paramedics could arrive.

"They made him die. They could have saved him," said Joseph Lupio, the victim's brother-in-law. "They worked at him, but it was too late. He was already blue." Mr. Lupio said it took another 28 hours for a city medical examiner to pick up the body, which had been resting in a bag on a bed.

A backlog of more than 1,300 emergency calls piled up Monday afternoon as ambulances were stuck or ran out of gas, some with patients inside. On Monday, there were 6,300 EMS calls, almost double the number on a normal day, officials said.

Annie O'Daly, 58, of Bay Ridge, waited for more than 30 hours for an ambulance after she slipped on a marble saddle at the door of her home on 76th Street at 7 p.m. Sunday, said her husband, James Leonhardt, who was shoveling snow at the time. He said she landed in a squatting position with her left leg bent sideways.

"It was just a nightmare," Ms. O'Daly said Tuesday evening over the phone. "The thing was, it never should have happened. Those streets should have been plowed."

As his wife, wearing pajamas, writhed in pain outside, Mr. Leonhardt called 911 for an ambulance around 7:20 p.m., he said. "They told me it was en route." Two hours later, he carried her indoors and placed her on a mattress lugged downstairs. Her husband said she passed out a couple of times during the night.

Mr. Leonhardt said he called 911 several more times to no avail and contacted a private ambulance service the next morning; it arrived at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Several patrolmen and EMTs hoisted her over a 3-foot snowbank to Fourth Avenue, where an ambulance waited and took her to Lutheran Medical Center. She had X-rays and was told she had broken her ankle, tibia and fibula, she said.

During the ordeal, Ms. O'Daly said she thought of others worse off—the story of a stuck climber in Utah who cut off his arm with a penknife several years ago, as well as troops in Iraq. "All these things were going through my head," she said. "It was just awful. That and my rosary beads got me through."

On Tuesday morning, a heart-attack victim in Gerritsen Beach waited more than 70 minutes after calling 911 before being transported to an ambulance, which couldn't get closer than three or four blocks from the residence, said John Czap, chief of the Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department. He said his own ambulance tried to assist the victim but got stuck blocks away.

In another case, a stroke victim on Monday waited at least an hour before his ambulance service reached her home in the same neighborhood, Mr. Czap said.

He said his crew arrived at the victim's house about 15 minutes after receiving a call from the city fire department. Firefighters were on scene but couldn't get a city ambulance because of the weather, he said.

They drove the patient to a hospital on Kings Highway but couldn't get the ambulance past the snow-clogged entrance, he said. So they enlisted hospital workers to ferry the victim on a stretcher waist-high across a highway lane and a service road.

"I'm in my 60s. The last time I remember seeing snowplows, ambulances and buses totally stuck in snowdrifts had to be in the mid-1960s," said Mr. Czap.

The backlog of emergency calls was whittled down to 166 calls and 40 stuck ambulances by Tuesday morning, said Steve Ritea, an FDNY spokesman. Officials said 168 ambulances were bailed out at least once.

Mr. Ritea said he couldn't provide the average response time or how many ambulances were operable. Most of the calls weren't life-threatening, and the most critical calls were given a higher priority, he said.

The city called around for help. Nearby counties and New Jersey provided 36 ambulances, officials said.

"We had a tremendous number of calls yesterday despite very difficult conditions and did our best to respond, prioritizing life-threatening emergencies," said Mr. Ritea. "But we added extra units to help deal with the additional calls."

Zip Tie Snow Tires: The Cheapest Way To Blizzard-Proof Your Bike

It's officially that time of year, with snow and slush and ice perpetually impeding your biking. What to do? Well, if you've got a box of zip ties and feel like getting your MacGyver on, you do this.

Fritz Rice of the Dutch Bike Co. is the clever rider behind these makeshift snow tires, and while he admits they look a bit silly (and that some fixie-riding hipsters may have pioneered the idea), he seems pretty thrilled with the results:

I can accelerate, brake, and corner with aplomb, even on the vile snowpack/sheet ice mix the plows leave in the bike lanes. The zip ties dig nicely into the hardest packed surfaces, but they're thin enough not to bounce the bike around at low speed or on short pavement sections.

Photo : 50 Cent Shovels His Own Driveway?

Snow Complaints Piling Up Bloomberg Under Fire as Streets Remain Buried, With Cars and Buses Stranded

Trains and planes slowly started running again Tuesday across the New York region, while many streets remained buried in snow and Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to fend off criticism of the city's response to the fourth blizzard of his administration.

Elected officials and residents lashed out at Mr. Bloomberg for what they called the city's sluggish and inadequate response to the post-Christmas storm, prompting a chastened mayor to plead for patience as he promised officials were "doing everything we possibly can."

Even some of Mr. Bloomberg's allies—many of whom supported his successful bid last year for a third term—said they were outraged by the slow response that has endangered lives and left many roads impassable 24 hours after the snow stopped falling.

"The mayor needs to stop acting like Baghdad Bob and saying every thing's OK when we can see with our own eyes that clearly it's not," said Queens Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., who crossed party lines to endorse the mayor last year. "Talking about going to Broadway plays when there is a public-safety emergency happening in Queens is irresponsible."

Scott McCartney takes a look at the air travel headaches resulting from the blizzard that slammed the East Coast this week and why it could take until the weekend to get things back to normal. Plus, why Wall Street is optimistic about GM.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has taken heat for siding with Mr. Bloomberg on controversial issues, said she would hold hearings on the city's response in January.

"By all accounts, the collective storm response was not anywhere near up to the standards New Yorkers are accustomed to," she said. "This is unacceptable."

The mayor, speaking at the Office of Emergency Management headquarters in Brooklyn, insisted this storm is "not unlike any other we've had to deal with," a position some elected officials and residents question. Still, trying to strike a conciliatory tone in the face of rampant criticism, the mayor acknowledged New Yorkers are still "coping with serious hardship."

"The bottom line is we are doing everything we possibly can, and pulling every resource from every possible place to meet the unique challenges that this storm is posing," he said.

But the mayor became irked when reporters began questioning him. When asked if he regretted the response, he replied, "I regret everything in the world." At one point, he said "complaining doesn't help," and, at another point, he noted, "I'm angry, too."

The mayor's aides have said Mr. Bloomberg, now in his third term, holds himself accountable for whatever happens on his watch but stands by his record during the past nine years.

Abandoned cars and buses clogged city streets, foiling attempts to plow them. Mr. Bloomberg said that was the key difference between this storm and others. Speaking at around noon Tuesday, he said it would likely take about 24 hours before all streets were plowed, but cautioned that it could take longer.

From Sunday evening to Monday, police and authorized private tow trucks removed 1,000 vehicles from three major city thoroughfares alone: the Gowanus Expressway, the Van Wyck Expressway and the Cross Bronx Expressway, a police spokesman said. The number of disabled or abandoned vehicles towed from other streets wasn't immediately available. "We don't remember towing that many cars in such a short period—not in recent memory," said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne.

Some 250 Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses—out of a total fleet of 6,000—remained stranded Tuesday afternoon, down from a peak of 500, an agency spokesman said. Bus service remained slow and unreliable.

The city's transportation network, meanwhile, was slowly starting up again after being all but shut down for much of Monday. Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road both said they would be running a close-to-normal complement of trains Wednesday after running limited service Tuesday. Service had been restored on much of the subway system, but the MTA expected some outages to continue Tuesday night. Airports were open, but they faced severe delays.

The busy intersection of 86th Street and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge was a microcosm of the upheaval on city streets Tuesday afternoon.

The U.S. East Coast was slowly digging out early Tuesday after a gargantuan year-end blizzard unleashed snow from Georgia to Maine, shutting down airports, grounding flights and crippling rail and bus transport services. Video courtesy of Fox News.

A B8 bus that had been stuck in the snow since Sunday night straddled both southbound lanes of traffic between 85th and 86th streets, reducing traffic in both directions to one lane. MTA workers with shovels dug along the tires while a snowplow removed a large mound of snow in front. They were finally able to get the bus loose at 1:45 p.m. The driver rocked the bus back and forth several times before shaking it loose. Cars facing the wrong direction were left abandoned, further hampering the cleanup.

Residents along side streets expressed their frustration. On 85th Street, Demi Liapis complained about a yellow taxi that was stuck in the middle of the street. She said it was the reason plows hadn't once come down the street. "It's ridiculous," she said.

The cab's owner, Abdul Dil was only a block away from home when he got stuck at 2 a.m. Monday while looking for a parking spot. He spent Monday with the cab trying to flag down tow trucks and snow-removal crews to help dig him out, all the while enduring the wrath of residents on the block. He said they even called the taxi company to complain.

Mr. Dil said his son finally came from New Jersey with a few friends, and they were working to dig out the taxi yesterday afternoon. Any delay costs him money—he pays $200 dollars a day to lease it.

A tour of other side streets showed that even blocks completely clear of vehicles had still yet to be plowed.

The trouble led at least one elected official, Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, to call for the resignation of Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty. But Mr. Bloomberg Tuesday called the city officials managing the cleanup "the best in the country to lead the city."

In an interview on New York One, Mr. Doherty acknowledged that the storm "got ahead of us"—and that he was forced to use workers who had less training than usual. Because of budget cuts, the city used 100 sanitation workers who were undertrained, he said. The city is down 400 sanitation workers from two years ago.

"They only went to school for two weeks, they usually would go for a month," Mr. Doherty said of the employees. "I put them out there on Sunday. I said, 'You're out on the street.' They said: 'We've only had a couple days of driving.'" He said he told them, "You're going to learn on the job, real time, real conditions, get the job done."

The outcry over the snow removal also raised the specter of the mayoralty of John Lindsay. Slow cleanup in Brooklyn and Queens from a 1969 blizzard after the city had weathered a series of crippling strikes crystallized discontent with his administration.

"Mayors throughout the country realize that responses to snowstorms are a very symbolic thing," said Vincent Cannato, the author of a recent biography of Mr. Lindsay called "The Ungovernable City." "It's a direct way that citizens interact with city government. There's an expectation that roads will be cleared in a reasonable time."

Travelers brave snowy streets, icy rails and crowded airports for a second straight day

New Yorkers braved the snow for a second straight day as commuters this morning attempted to go to work following the weekend's big blizzard.

While the city was still digging out of the paralyzing snow, delays continued to plague buses and subways. Buses have been stranded since Sunday as the city tries to plow streets after 20 inches fell between Sunday night and Monday morning.

"Crews are working first to clear stuck buses and the number of buses that are stuck is being reduced," said MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan. "Second, we are evaluating roadway conditions on a route-by-route basis to determine whether conditions permit us to run service."

Donovan also said all subway lines were experiencing delays or service changes:

-- The entire 7 train is running local in both directions.

-- No L train service between Myrtle-Wyckoff Station and Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway Station.

-- No Q service between 57th Street-7th Avenue Station in Manhattan and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn in both directions.

-- No N service between Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station and 59th Street Station in Brooklyn in both directions.

-- No D service between Bay Parkway Station and Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue Station in Brooklyn in both directions.

-- B service was suspended between Bedford Park Boulevard Station in the Bronx and Brighton Beach Station in Brooklyn.

-- No Franklin shuttle between Franklin Avenue Street and Prospect Avenue Stations.

Both the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North were running limited service today as commuters east and north of the city attempted to get into Manhattan. The LIRR was closed Monday, while Metro-North resumed service Monday afternoon.

New Jersey Transit trains to Penn Station was fully restored today, while NJ Transit's bus service resumed this morning. Bus service had been suspended Monday after the Port Authority Bus Terminal was closed.

After spending two days tossing and turning on airport floors, thousands of bleary-eyed travelers spent this morning boarding flights as the airlines try and schedule flights that had been delayed out of Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports.

LaGuardia and Kennedy began to receive inbound flights on Monday night, while Newark began receiving inbound flights early this morning.

The words “on time” lit up at least half the departure boards at LaGuardia to the delight of passengers stretched out sleeping under blankets inside warm terminals.

The storm was New York City’s sixth-worst since record-keeping began in 1869, said Adrienne Leptich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

A February 2006 storm dropped 26.9 inches of snow on Central Park, breaking the previous record, set in 1947, by half an inch.

The storm dumped various amounts across the region -- 29 inches on Staten Island; 24 on Brooklyn; 32 on Rahway, NJ; and 12 on Philadelphia.

Christmas Blizzard of 2010: LaGuardia, JFK airports are back flying, but mass transit remains a mess

After the storm: Aerial view of Manhattan, and Central Park (below).

New Yorkers are digging out of the sixth largest snowstorm in city history Tuesday - one that buried the streets in 4-foot drifts, paralyzed transit and spread a strange and wonderful hush across town.

The Blizzard of 2010 dumped 20 inches of snow in Central Park, up to 2 feet in Brooklyn and 29 inches on Staten Island. Winds gusted up to 60 mph during the worst of the overnight blow.

Remarkably for such a powerful storm, no casualties were reported.

Mayor Bloomberg responded testily to questions about the transit failures, the perilous backlog of emergency calls and complaints that the streets were so clogged even snowplows got stuck.

"The world has not come to an end," the mayor said. "On balance, I think you'll find we kept the city safe and we're cleaning it up."

Still, havoc was widespread:

- All three major New York-area airports closed for nearly 24 hours, stranding thousands of travelers during the post-Christmas rush.

LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark reopened for takeoffs Monday night, with landings resuming at LaGuardia and Kennedy, but the ripple effect of canceled flights guaranteed that disruptions will continue for days.

Henry Williams of the Bronx, who made an epic eight-hour journey to JFK only to learn his flight to Jamaica was canceled, was among hundreds of people reclining on the airport floor. "I'd rather be lying down on the beach," Williams, 58, said ruefully.

- Many subway lines ground to a halt and the others were limping. A group of travelers who had been booked on early-morning flights at JFK ended up stranded in the Howard Beach, Queens, A train station when the AirTrain died. They opened their luggage and donned all their clothes to keep warm.

"I think they have to invent a new word for how I'm feeling because horrible isn't enough," said Adrian Caesar, 24, a student from Brownsville, Brooklyn, who spent a miserable night on a subway bench.

- Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Jay Walder acknowledged the storm hit mass transit extremely hard - and warned that it won't be a lot better Tuesday. "It will be a tough day [today]. We will have limited service," he said.

- Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road shut down for much of the day, reopening service on some lines Monday night. Hundreds of people were forced to sleep in Penn Station, either in the waiting rooms or on stalled trains. Late Monday, signal problems shut down Amtrak and NJTransit service to New Jersey.

- The bridges and tunnels closed or were terribly clogged during the storm, and stalled cars littered area highways in every direction. Blocked streets meant big delays for ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. The FDNY had a backlog of 1,300 calls and the NYPD had at least 400.

At an afternoon news conference, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said most major avenues had been cleared, but side streets were a problem, largely because so many stalled and abandoned cars were blocking snowplows. "Some [streets] will be cleaned today, some tonight, some unfortunately not until tomorrow," he said.

Walder shrugged off questions about the unfortunates who spent the night stuck on an A train between the Aqueduct and Rockaway Blvd. stations in Queens. "We will go back and look over all the details of that," he said."We did what we could do."

It will take a while for the snow to melt. The forecast is for a high of 35 Today but reaching the 50s by the weekend.

It wasn't all doom and gloom: New Yorkers woke to sparkling white drifts blotting out the usual grime, and a rare soothing silence, with no cars honking - and not even planes roaring overhead.

On the streets, a small-town atmosphere took hold as strangers struggling through waist-high drifts greeted one another with "Good luck!" and "Crazy, huh?"

Not everyone could take the day off. Marie Campbell, 42, of Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, spent 30 minutes struggling to get to the subway so she could get to her job as a clinician at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan. "Oh, man, I wanted a white Christmas, but not this much," she said.

Eugene Lukyanenko, 33, an emergency room nurse at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, hitched a ride on a sanitation truck from his home in Sheepshead Bay, then cadged a lift from an ambulance and hoofed the remaining way. He arrived minutes early for his 7 a.m. shift. "I was one of the first nurses to walk in," Lukyanenko said. "It feels good."

Betty Wein, 52, a lab assistant at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, was not feeling good. She worked a 20-hour shift because colleagues couldn't get in.

"That's almost three shifts in a row. We drank coffee to stay awake," she said, struggling to dig out her car so she could go home.

Juan Gomez was one of the entrepreneurs who saw opportunity swirling in the storm. He woke at dawn, grabbed his snow shovel and hit the streets of Yonkers. By 8a.m., he earned $270.

"I'll make up what I spent on Christmas by the end of the day," said Gomez, 27, of Yonkers.

Tom Verini, 49, who owns Eastchester Auto Body in the Bronx, was looking forward to a lot of dinged-up cars.

"We are the Grim Reaper of this type of weather," he said.

Credit : NY Daily News

Weather Journal: A Blizzard for the Books

Associated Press

A taxi was buried in a Manhattan snow drift in the wake of the blizzard. By Monday morning, 20 inches of snow had accumulated in Central Park. See more photos.

The snow has ended, the shovels are digging and the children of Greater New York are relishing one of the biggest snowstorms in the region’s history.

Featuring hurricane force winds, near-record accumulations, and very rare “thundersnow” over Manhattan (fast forward this video to the 1:45 mark!) — the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010 will certainly go down as one for the books. All told, 27 states from South Dakota to South Carolina to Maine received snow totals of an inch or more. Unofficially, Elizabeth, N.J., recorded 31.8 inches of snow — the second most for any location in New Jersey history.

Full-on blizzard conditions were recorded for nine continuous hours at JFK and Newark airports (LaGuardia blizzard-ed for five hours). All three airports remained closed until Monday evening.

With top leaders away on vacation and his state buried under the most snow in 111 years, New Jersey’s Senate president stepped in to declare a state of emergency. Images from across the region showed equal parts elation and frustration.

As Weather Journal predicted Sunday night, the most intense snowfall bands set up directly over the tri-state area — only about 10 miles west of our forecast. Northeast New Jersey received the brunt of this storm, with dozens of reports of snow totals exceeding two feet. One unofficial report of 29 inches from Great Kills, Staten Island, if verified, would rank as one of the greatest snowfall totals in New York City’s recorded history. Elsewhere, Newark Airport officially recorded 24.2 inches of snow, good enough for third all time (behind 1947 and 1996). Central Park officially recorded 20 inches of snow, ranking sixth all time, less than a quarter inch behind the historic 1996 blizzard. See all the spotter-reported snow totals here.

Although the snow accumulations have ended, high winds and blowing snow will continue to wreak havoc with cleanup efforts, especially at area airports, at least through Tuesday. Expect major delays to continue for at least the first part of the week as crews work overtime to dig out Greater New York. All this snow will keep our temperatures a degree or two cooler than they otherwise would have been for the next few days, as the high albedo bounces the sun’s warmth right back out to space.

The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang also has an excellent wrap-up post. Beyond the horror stories of stranded buses, trains, planes and subways — Gothamist has noticed many of the furriest New Yorkers actually enjoying the snowstorm. We hope you can too!

Storm Cripples New York Subways, Trains

Associated Press

Travelers waited in New York’s Penn Station as train service is impacted due to a severe winter storm Monday.

New York City’s transportation system was crippled by snow Monday morning, with service suspended on two railroads and multiple subway lines, especially in above-ground sections in the Bronx and southern Brooklyn.

The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad were shut down, while New Jersey Transit was running 40% fewer trains than normal. The three railroads are four of the nation’s busiest. (Check the current status of all Metropolitan Transportation Authority service here.)

The Staten Island Railway is completely shut down. NJ Transit’s bus service was also suspended.

Roads across the region were closed in places, and officials were warning people to stay home. The three major airports also remained closed due to snow.

Metro-North was trying to start running limited service with diesel engines, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said. Four of its trains were briefly stranded in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. (See update below)

An A train with 400 passengers on board lost power because of ice on the third rail and was stranded at the Aqueduct station for seven hours without heat overnight.

A Q train was stuck at Cortelyou Road for less time, an MTA spokesman said. Both trains were eventually freed when they linked up with other trains that pushed them to safety.

“There’s no excuse but there are reasons,” Anders said. “There were rescues taking place all around the territory last night.”

Five NJ Transit buses were also stranded overnight and had to be rescued by tow trucks. The agency stopped its bus service at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, but some buses were already on the road or left shortly thereafter to try to get people home. Passengers on one bus that runs between Jersey City and Hackensack didn’t get to their destinations until sometime after 4 a.m., a spokesman said.

NJ Transit’s railroad was in better shape than those in New York in part because it relies solely on overhead wires and diesel locomotives to power its trains, not electricity from a third rail.

Much of the trouble that has afflicted the two New York commuter railroads and the subway has been due to ice and snow covering the the third rail, causing trains to lose power. To get them moving again, the railroads try to link up two trains, raising the odds that one of them will get some power from the rail. Trains are also equipped with scrapers that remove ice from the third rail as they move.

Meanwhile, de-icing and snowblowing trains are also plying the rails, trying to clear ice.

New Jersey Drivers Made Blizzard Mess Worse

Reuters

A truck stuck in a snow bank is shoveled out in Hoboken, N.J., on Monday. Hundreds of New Jersey motorists required help from state officials.

About 2,300 drivers had to be helped on New Jersey’s major roadways during and after blizzard, and some families camped out in their cars with engines running for up to 12 hours, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Transportation Commissioner James Simpson said he saw drivers –- even truckers –- who had no business being on the road and looked as if they usually only drove occasionally or on the weekends. “People did not heed any advice,” he said. “On Route 1, people were going shopping to get their after-Christmas discounts while the storm was raging.”

He also saw something he’d never seen before: drivers stopping in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike, getting out and cleaning off their windshield.

“We were yelling at people left and right, get out of your car and pull off to the side,” he said.

On Route 280 near West Orange, cars that had trouble with steep hills slid into each other and other drivers became stuck while trying to navigate around the mess. The resulting traffic jam blocked plows and made a bad situation worse.

“You had a lot of cars that were spinning out because they didn’t have the right tires, they didn’t have the right transmission, they didn’t have four-wheel drive,” Simpson said. “The next thing you know, it looked like a bunch of kids’ toys that somebody had just shaken up and thrown out of a box.”

Nobody was hurt on New Jersey’s major roadways, Simpson said. Hundreds were taken to shelters but others stayed with their vehicles. State Police officers provided fuel when necessary, he said.

Two hockey players on the New Jersey Devils, Patrik Elias and Travis Zajac, were caught in the storm on Route 280. Near Holmdel, four buses slid and blocked the roadway.

Thousands of pieces of equipment –- public and private –- were used to try to clear off the roads, with some plows also getting stuck in the massive snow accumulations. With 20 to 30 inches of snow across much of the state, winds up to 50 mph and six-foot snow drifts, attempts to clear to roads often felt futile.

“After we come through with the plows, the winds were blowing horizontally,” Simpson said. “They were blowing the snow right back onto the highway. So it was like, what are we doing? It’s like we can’t win here.”

Simpson said New Jersey drivers need to take more personal responsibility and stay off the roads during blizzards. He said it was too soon to say where the state’s response could be improved, but putting GPS technology in all the response vehicles would make it easier to coordinate the fleet in the future.