Streets Finally Cleared; Lessons Weighed

(Updated) Since the last week’s storm struck, visiting nurses had been unable for days to attend Carolyn Flint’s mother on narrow Edgar Street in the Hill — until a late-innings all-out push finally cleared the way.

Sunday afternoon, three days after a storm added to a record blast of snow on New Haven’s streets, emergency crews working around the clock made it to Flint’s street.They towed two cars. They filled 30 buckets with snow and hauled them away. And they were beginning to open Edgar back up.

The little crescent off Elm Street known as University Place, whose curve full of five-foot drifts had frustrated all plows Saturday night, also emerged as drivable once again Sunday.

Edgar and University were two of some three dozen small and narrow streets where passability remained a problem into the weekend.

The mayor declared an emergency Saturday, then dispatched city crews and contractors through late Sunday night to streets that had remained snowed in. He also convened a debriefing of top officials to draw lessons from the storm.

The debriefing took place Sunday morning at the Emergency Operations Center at 200 Orange as city crews carried out a two-day emergency operation to finally make dozens of narrow and ice-and-snow-caked roads passable in the wake of a storm Thursday that dumped a surprise 15 – 18 inches on top of more than two feet of white stuff already setting up semi-permanent residency in New Haven. It took days to get some streets like Frances Hunter Drive cleared of snow so that people like Robin Ings (pictured) could even get or leave home; a briefing for frustrated aldermen is planned for Tuesday night.

Lesson #1: ​“We learned that 15 inches on top of 30 inches is two times as much work as a basic 15 inches. It was a much slower plow operation that we thought. We underestimated it,” Mayor John DeStefano said after the debriefing, where he met with city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, public works chief John Prokop, traffic czar Jim Travers, and emergency management’s Rich Fontana.

Lesson #2: The city needs promptly to tow cars parked on narrow streets in defiance of bans and then get right to plowing. And the city needs to communicate the parking rules clearly to people.

“We learned the public will appreciate [aggressive towing] as long as we’re [clear] and follow through,” DeStefano said. ​“We’re going to be more aggressive about towing. People are pretty accepting and really cooperating.”

The mayor declared an emergency Saturday and then sent crews round the clock to major arteries that remained insufficiently plowed as well as to the three dozen or so toughest, narrowed roads, which in some case remained unpassable. The city sent robo-calls and dispatched cops with loudspeakers to inform people on the streets about the towing, then got to work, according to the mayor. DeStefano promised to continue that aggressive approach as more storms — the first expected as soon as Tuesday — arrive. ​“We’re going to own [these streets] for the rest of the season,” he said.

The targeted streets are mostly one- or two-block roadways, or stretches of longer roadways, that have been only partially plowed or not plowed at all. The streets include Greene, Lyon, Hughes, Jefferson, Academy, Batter Terrace, Hotchkiss, Stanley, Scranton, Carmel, Ellsworth (between Derby and Whalley), Cottage, Clark, Avon, Edgar, Salem, Lilac, Henry, Harding, University, Ivy, Lenox, Welcome, Clay, Shelter, Lloyd, Edgehill, Canner, Sheffied, Maple, Winthrop, Norton, Saltonstall, Wolcott, Lenox, Lexington.

As the city cleared away the mounds Sunday, it extended a parking ban until 6 a.m. Monday on some of these streets in order to complete the job. The city is urging people there to park in nearby lots. For details call 203 – 946-8221 or check the city’s website.

Lesson #3 from the storm, according to DeStefano: The city doesn’t need to buy new equipment. But it now has a better sense of which contractors to call in — and which special equipment to request — to handle successive pile-ups like this month’s record series of snowfalls.

Catching up with an emergency the magnitude of which caught them off guard, and amid widespread complaints around New Haven, officials opened the Emergency Operations Center on a 24/7 basis Friday night.

Smuts said that the city has hired contractors to bring payloaders in to some of those impassable streets, where the city’s larger trucks couldn’t fit the past few days, and the smaller trucks couldn’t handle the record amounts of snow.

DeStefano also urged people Saturday to clear their sidewalks. The city plans to start issuing $100 tickets to people who don’t. ​“I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to clear your sidewalk,” DeStefano said in a message delivered Saturday night. ​“It’s the law and it’s the right thing to do.” The mayor also announced the city would begin aggressively enforcing a rule prohibiting people from keeping cars parked and unmoved in a street spot for 72 hours. Move the car, or face getting towed.

On a tour of the operation in progress Sunday, Melvin Gary of University Place showed public works supervisor Tony Desai how high the snow had been on University Place.

“When I looked out this morning, I said they did a great a job,” said Gary.

At the city’s Emergency Operations Center at 200 Orange Street, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said, ​“The Fire Department has been our eyes” to determine which streets to target for the accelerated clean up. He said as the firemen go out continually to dig out their hydrants, they call in changing conditions, especially as to which streets are impassable for emergency vehicles.

On Sunday, Desai, a 12-year employee with the department, was supervising three crews, one on Edgar Street, one working on Lyon, and a third on Howard Avenue.

There with cars forbidden to park on the odd side, Wilfredo Perez and his payloader were able to widen the avenue from Kimberly to Congress by a car’s width, improving sight lines and turning radii at the Congress and Howard intersection.

In the entire emergency operation by Sunday mid-afternoon, only about 20 cars have been towed, said Smuts. He added that the coordinated all-hands-on-deck operation was going as planned and ​“on point.”

Before each small street is cleared a robo-call goes out to residents in the affected area, Smuts said. Smuts urged people to call the recorded snow update information phone number 203 – 946-7669 and the number to reach a live person to express concern or complaint, 203 – 946-8221. In addition, the ​“Citizen Alert Notification Sign Up Button” is located here under ​“emergency information” on the city’s website.

Where is all the snow ultimately going after payloaders heave it into trailers? Desai said the dumping grounds are three: East Shore Park, unused industrial areas on East and Ives streets, and Marginal Drive at Route 34 and Yale Street.

Desai said he and many others have been working 16-hour days.

As a new storm is anticipated to hit New Haven Tuesday and Wednesday, Smuts expressed an additional worry: ​“We’re concerned about roofs, if they’ve flat.”

One carport has collapsed so far, he said. ​“No major building yet.” He said the city’s building department is making a pre-emptive examination particularly of gas station canopies and older industrial buildings that tend to have flat roofs.

A well-maintained building like Assa Abloy’s Long Wharf plant is not the focus, he said. ​“If a factory is shuttered, we’re concerned.”

Robin Ings was pleased to see Frances Hunter Drive finally drivable this weekend. She had been out of town at a funeral when the latest storm hit Thursday. She returned and went to work, in Derby. She called home.

“Ma,” one of her children said, ​“you can’t come home.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

He was. More than a foot snow blanketed Frances Hunter, a suburban-style street of new single-family homes constructed in the Dixwell neighborhood with government help (and where Alderman Greg Morehead lives). The plows finally got there mid-Friday; Ings made it home after work Friday afternoon.

The crews returned during this weekend’s emergency mop-up. ​“They did a good job,” Ings said while resuming shoveling the outer contours of her driveway Sunday.

But she wondered aloud about what she called inadequate plowing in general. It takes all day into the night for the city to clear Frances Hunter even after small snowfalls, she said.

“I’m from the Valley. When they plow there, there’s one truck behind the other. When I got here, I said, ‘“Wow,’” Ings said.

“As soon as you hit Hamden, you see pavement. Dixwell Avenue is still Dixwell Avenue. I guess people want to park.”

And now the city wants to tow.