Syracuse struggles to clear a foot of wet, heavy snow from the streets.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Syracuse snowplows were still out this afternoon clearing snow from residential city streets, some of which had not seen a plow since the snow started falling Wednesday morning.
Although Syracuse can dispatch a foot of snow more easily than most cities, some city residents were griping today that the streets did not get cleared fast enough. City officials asked for patience.
"The streets were an embarrassment this morning,'' said Kate Jwaskiewicz, who was driving with her 6-month-old daughter when her car got stuck in the intersection of First North Street and LeMoyne Avenue, on the North Side, at about 7:45 a.m.
Jwaskiewicz said three passing boys and two nearby residents rushed to dig her out and push her car to the side of the road.
"The people of Syracuse (specifically the North Side) rock,'' she wrote in an email. "As a first-time mother, first time driving on really messy roads with my baby girl, I'm so glad there are good people to help.''
Samantha Stento, right, a LeMoyne College student from Binghamton, talks this morning with Rob Hoston, of Lyncourt, about how to get Stento's car out of a snowbank on Manor Drive on the East Side of Syracuse. Hoston stopped to help Stento as he passed on his way to work. Tim Knauss
LeMoyne College student Samantha Stento was on her way home for the holidays to Binghamton about 10 a.m. when her car skidded on hilly Manor Drive, on the East Side, and landed in a snowbank. Rob Hoston, a passing motorist on his way to work, stopped and spent more than half an hour digging her out.
Pete O'Connor, Syracuse public works commissioner, said it has taken longer than normal to clear the streets, mainly because this storm featured persistent wet snow that never let up from early Wednesday morning to this morning.
"It was that heavy, wet snow and it just kept coming down and staying on all the main roads, so we never got a chance to get into all the residential areas,'' O'Connor said. "It was a tough first snow for the citizens of Syracuse, because we definitely weren't able to do the job we normally do, as good as we (normally) do it, and we understand that.''
The snowfall Wednesday created hazardous driving conditions all day, requiring all 19 available snowplows to focus on clearing main routes and the steepest hills, said Robert "Kip" Culkin, the DPW superintendent of snow and ice control.
Syracuse snowplow operator Steve Barnum drives up Westcott Street today into an area plow drivers call "Hell's Kitchen,'' because the streets are narrow and often choked with cars.Tim Knauss
Culkin coordinates snowplows from an office off Midler Avenue. His window looks out upon Beattie Street, one of the hilly side streets off Erie Boulevard. Six times Wednesday, Culkin said, he watched cars slide sideways down Beattie, prompting him to call a plow to that street and to other nearby hills.
Nine times on Wednesday afternoon, the DPW got calls to plow out stranded city school buses loaded with children going home, O'Connor said. Police also called them to other areas where cars were stuck.
Culkin said he tried several times Wednesday to send plows into side streets, but each time had to call them back to plow main roads. The snow "kept covering,'' he said.
All told, the DPW has 25 large trucks that can plow, O'Connor said. Four were unavailable because they were still outfitted for picking up leaves, he said. Two others broke down during the storm.
If all 25 trucks had been plowing, roads would have been cleared more quickly, but probably not fast enough to suit people on side streets, O'Connor said. Dozens of phone calls poured in Wednesday and Thursday to the DPW and to the mayor's office.
Mick Sicchio, the mayor's director of constituent services, said he answered five to 10 calls per hour during the storm. Most of the callers were looking for "a little empathy and a little information,'' he said. Most were satisfied when he explained the DPW's strategy of clearing main streets first, he said.
Culkin said he was able to send plows onto residential streets beginning this morning. The DPW divides the city into 58 plowing areas, or "squares.'' As of lunchtime, 19 of the 58 squares -- or about one-third of the city -- had been plowed, he said.
There are more than 400 miles of roadway in Syracuse, O'Connor said. To plow every lane on every road once requires about 1,700 miles of plow driving, he said.
Steve Barnum, a heavy equipment operator and president of AFSCME Local 400, allowed a reporter to accompany him as he set out this afternoon to plow the Westcott Street neighborhood, an area that plow drivers refer to as "Hell's Kitchen.''
"It's hell to plow,'' Barnum said. "Small, narrow streets, cars on both sides.''
As Barnum maneuvered the 14-year-old truck along University-area streets lined with student apartment houses, he occasionally slalomed between cars parked on both sides of the road. On Clarendon Street, he was forced to back up and turn around because cars were parked so closely together.
Culkin, who has worked for the city for 36 years, said Syracuse still has as many snowplows as it did decades ago. What has changed, he said, is the number of cars per city residence, and the number of cars parked on the street during snowstorms. That makes it harder to plow.
"There were not as many cars back then,'' he said.
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