Juan Gonzalez, writing in Thursday’s The New York Daily News. compared the 2010 Christmas blizzard with a snowstorm handled by Mayor Giuliani:
Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and his flaky ideas doom New York during storm
Back in 1996, a similar monster storm struck our city. It dumped 20 inches, closed airports, and left drifts 20-feet high.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani not only declared a snow emergency and ordered all nonessential vehicles off the road, he took 3,300 city buses out of service so they wouldn’t block sanitation trucks and rescue vehicles.
Giuliani also asked then-Gov. George Pataki for help. Pataki dispatched 400 national guardsmen with 100 Humvees that were used as ambulances to transport medical supplies and health workers.
Read the rest of the story HERE
Mayor Giuliani approached each snow as a major event, from a 1996 article:
“Snow is to a mayor as foreign policy is to a president,” said Mitchell L. Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. “You have a monopoly on it, so you have to go out and handle it. So you leave City Hall and go to all five boroughs, and you can look terrific fighting the snow.”
Dave Firestone (January 09, 1996) THE BLIZZARD OF 1996: THE MAYOR; For Giuliani, Riding Storm In High Gear. The New York Times (HERE)
For Mayors, snow storms are career-affecting events. Jennifer Steinhauer provided examples in this The New York Times article from yesterday:
Snow nearly undid the mayoralty of John V. Lindsay of New York — who made the very unfortunate mistake in 1969 of plowing through a snowbound street in Queens in a limousine — and that of Michael A. Bilandic after a 1979 blizzard in Chicago. In 1982, Mayor William H. McNichols Jr. did not have what it took in snow-accustomed Denver, and out he went. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of the District of Columbia overpromised and underdelivered after a record-breaking snowstorm in February, and that, among other perceived sins, helped lead to his primary loss this year.
read more here: Weathering the Storms of Voter Discontent (HERE)
HOW BAD WAS THE 2010 CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD?
Bloomberg v. Blizzard: How Strong Is the Mayor’s Defense?
Nate Silver does a data-rich analysis of the last eight major New York snowstorms, going back to 1969.
He notes that Bloomberg has handled three prior storms as mayor.
This week’s storm wasn’t as much of a surprise. But — and this is just a guess — perhaps the fact that the forecast worsened significantly on Christmas, the very last day that most people want to think about disaster planning, contributed to a sluggish response.
Then, when the snowfall began falling late on Sunday morning, it was fairly light at first — perhaps providing for some false sense of security — but it became severe quite quickly, and the accumulation was fairly rapid even by the standards of a blizzard.
read more here: Bloomberg v. Blizzard: How Strong Is the Mayor’s Defense? (HERE)
When the 2010 NYC Christmas Blizzard is added to emergency management case files, some factors scream out:
- City refused to declare a snow emergency. Perhaps because of the millions of overtime dollars that will be generated with a Christmas weekend callout. (HERE)
- Storm comes seven days before 100 Sanitation Department supervisors are scheduled for demotion as part of a shrinking of “New York’s Strongest” under Deputy Mayor Goldsmith’s micro-management government reinventing.
- On top of laying off 400 sanitation workers in the past two years. (HERE)
- Metropolitan Transit Authority fails to enact its Level 4 Winter Operations until well after the blizzard snarls the city. (HERE) The delay stranded buses, stalled subways and significantly delayed MTA’s ability to respond to the snow.
- Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith bungled New York’s preparedness for Sunday’s winter storm, his first since coming in as the former Indianapolis mayor. (HERE)
TRIPLE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, ECONOMIC CONSERVATISM AND PLUTOCRACY
In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, David Sirota describes the New Normal:
MyFoxNY
… scientists agree that weather – including snow patterns – will become more intense as the planet’s ecosystem is transformed by human-produced pollution. So while New York’s near-record snowstorm may not be the direct result of unbridled carbon emissions, powerful storms like it will undoubtedly be more frequent thanks to our head-in-the-sand attitude toward the environment.
… America is still being eviscerated by conservatives’ anti-tax, budget-cutting religion – a religion whose high priest is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
He campaigned against proposals to replenish depleted public coffers via slightly higher taxes on Wall Streeters, all while citing those depleted coffers as a rationale for massive municipal layoffs. Those job cuts, which were particularly acute at New York’s snow-removing sanitation department, have now predictably translated into an immobilized metropolis.
Read the entire A snow-filled glimpse of America’s future (HERE)
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
You Be the Ref. Are We, or Aren’t We?
9 commentsSteve Marshall
OUR WORLD-FAMOUS GNOME HANDLER, Steve Marshall became incensed yesterday when he heard that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell referred to the rest of us as a “nation of wussies.” So Steve has penned this Open Letter to Gov. Rendell and shared it with us.
Well well well….Governor Rendell calls us the “Nation of Wusses” because the NFL took action to cancel Sunday’s game between the Vikings and the Eagles. This comment shows just how out of touch you have become in your insulated Harrisburg castle. Something you obviously didn’t get and none of your over-paid, under-worked assistants bothered to tell you is that the average guy out here in Pennsylvania does not have access to your state-provided SUV or RV, nor the state-provided State Trooper driver. When things go wrong on the highway for Joe Sixpack, the first thing they tend to do is call 911, whether that be skidding into a ditch, getting stuck on a hill or running head on into a speeding semi.
Mr. Rendell, I expected better of you.
Mr. Rendell, just WHO do you think answers those calls for help? The Tooth Fairy? NO, it’s your First Responders, those very gallant individuals who many of your cities are trying to lay off. So the NFL ruined your Sunday. Ahh gees, not much for a Lame Duck to do around the old Governor’s mansion these days?
You need to think about this….that was 40,000 fans who DIDN’T have to take to your highways in a blizzard to get to a stupid football game. If they had attempted to go, they would have likely caused dozens of additional accidents and stranded motorists….requiring your First Responders to head out on those snow clogged highways to rescue them, gladly risking their lives in doing so because that’s what is expected of them.
I won’t even talk about after the game, when the snow would have been worse, the roads dark and the fans/drivers a little inebriated.
Wusses? No Wusses to be found in a Fire Station unless it’s one of your bean counters looking to cut some more money out of emergency services.
……………… (signed) Steve Marshall