Oy, Chihuahua

(Updated) To get the odd side of one major thoroughfare cleared of record mounds of snow, Lynwood Dorsey ended up having a car towed with a pooch named Elvis yapping inside.

A teal Chevy Blazer with a chihuaha sitting in the driver’s seat was one of over a dozen cars displaced by Dorsey’s squad of plow trucks clearing the odd side of Orange Street on Thursday afternoon. The cars were towed by York Towing to the parking lot at nearby Wilbur Cross High School. Each towed car’s owner received a $100 ticket.

Once towers realized the Blazer was occupied, they returned the car to its parking spot, after plow trucks passed by.

Reached later by email, the owner of the Blazer and the chihuahua said that her husband had left the car only momentarily on Orange Street. The dog was not by any means abandoned in the car, she said.

While Elvis prevented vehicle removal (though not a ticket) for one car owner, another car owner owner avoided both thanks to a neighbor’s phone call, and a last-minute, bare-handed dig-out.

That was the scene as the city responded to the latest dump in a winter of record-setting snowfall. While neighbors dug out across town, the city asked people to park on the even sides of streets, in order to allow plows to move through unimpeded. Starting at 1 p.m. on Thursday, the city began ticketing and towing cars on the odd side of Orange Street so that plows could open up a main traffic artery into town.

Heading up the operation was Dorsey, a supervisor with the Department of Public Works. The 42-year-old New Haven native started as a laborer with the department at age 19. A well-thumbed copy of the New Testament stays on his dashboard. An ​“all access pass” from one of his concerts with Deacon Lou Dobbs and the Christian Sons hangs from his rear-view mirror; Dorsey sings tenor in the quartet.

Just after 2 p.m., Dorsey was on a different mission, stationed at the intersection of Humphrey and Orange Street. While he blocked oncoming traffic with his Ford pick-up, payloader operator Wilfredo Perez made an enormous pile of snow at the corner. Behind the payloader, several big plow trucks waited to further widen the street. They had been pulled off their normal routes through town for a special Orange Street detail.

Further up the street, traffic enforcement handed out tickets on odd-side cars while tow trucks loaded them up.

When the payloader was done, the plowing operation moved up a few blocks to the corner of Orange and Edwards streets, where Perez made another pile.

Meanwhile, Dorsey juggled non-stop communications from multiple devices: A squawking walkie-talkie, beeping Nextel radio, ringing cellphone. He shouted orders to Perez and handled a special request from an East Rocker trying to get to the airport and wanting her driveway plowed out.

On the next block up, a man was at work digging out a lone odd-side car. Noticing that, Dorsey radioed to the traffic and parking enforcers. He told them to order up a tow truck, because his plows needed to get through. ​“I’ve got to be consistent,” he said.

Word came back over the radio: We thought that guy had time to move. We’ll send a truck.

The man, Steve Menzel, said he was digging out his neighbor’s car. He said he’d called the couple who owns it. The wife had to take their baby to the doctor, but the husband was on his way, he said.

Sure enough, Taylor Dansby (pictured), an architecture and digital fabrication professor at Yale, came running up and began brushing snow off with his bare hands, grumbling as he did so.

“It’s great that they let us know they were towing,” he said sarcastically. ​“How am I supposed to know?”

New Haven is ​“the only town in the northeast that doesn’t handle this well,” he said. The city has ​“no systematic way to remove snow.”

“I’ve been here for four years and I still don’t know how to know if I’m going to be towed or not,” Dansby said. ​“It’s an obvious racket.”

“We did two citywide calls yesterday telling people to park only on the even side,” said City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts when contacted later by phone. ​“For Orange Street, when we decided we were going to tow, we did another call.” Police in cars went up the street making announcements on public address systems. And the plan was posted on the internet. ​“We did every form of communication we could possibly think of,” Smuts said. People can call 946-SNOW for the latest on parking bans and towingd. They can also sign up on the city website to receive phone notifications.

“Ho!” shouted Dorsey from down the block, where he was waiting outside his truck with his plow crew. ​“We got a lot of money sitting here!”

With snow still covering half his car, Dansby jumped behind the wheel and managed to pull out of the snowbank.

Obstacle removed, Dorsey and five plow trucks moved up Orange Street. But first he instructed Perez to head in the other direction with the payloader and start filling up a waiting tractor trailer with the snow piles he’d made.

After passing a ski-geared couple carrying snowboards in the street, Dorsey came upon a tow truck between Canner Street and Mitchell Drive. It was backing in to remove a last car on Orange Street. The tow truck driver and his co-pilot said they’d removed 12 or 13 cars so far from Orange Street that afternoon.

As they pulled the teal Blazer away, a brown and white Chihuahua suddenly appeared at the driver’s side window. With its front paws up on the door, it yapped furiously behind the glass.

The towers said they would put the car back in place after the plows passed by, since it had a canine stowaway still aboard.

“Why would someone leave a dog in the car?” Dorsey said, with irritation.

Amanda Eckler, who owns the chihuahua and Blazer with her husband, emailed the Independent on Friday. She said her husband, who is in the snow removal business himself, had stopped by Orange Street to check on a client. The dog was only left in the car for a short time, Eckler said.

Dorsey and his crew proceeded up Orange Street and took a right on English Drive. After widening that road, Dorsey radioed back to his plow operators. He told them to head back to their normal plow routes; the Orange Street special assignment was complete. ​“Thank you guys very much.”

Dorsey headed to a new snow mound at Wilbur Cross High School, where he widened a path so that tractor trailers could dump their snow. As he plowed, he voiced his disbelief at the amount of snow New Haven has received this year. He said he had to cancel his trip to Atlantic City with his wife this weekend.

Dorsey said he hasn’t taken a vacation, with multiple days off, since he got married in 1999. ​“I don’t know. I just like to work, man.”

Dorsey headed back down Orange Street to examine his crew’s work, passing snowshoers and cross-country skiers near the College Woods section of East Rock Park.

The street still wasn’t cleared as much as Dorsey would like it to be north of Edwards. The plows just can’t do it as well as the payloader, he said. But another payloader wasn’t available.

Back at the corner of Grove and Orange, Dorsey got out to see Perez loading up another tractor trailer-load of snow. After starting the day at 7 a.m., Dorsey said, he would probably be working until 11 p.m.