The morning after a winter snowstorm snarled traffic across the region, trapping commuters on the roads for hours, forcing schoolchildren to ditch their buses and grinding plowing operations to a halt in some neighborhoods, Mayor Bill de Blasio strongly defended the city’s efforts to clear the streets and rejected the suggestion that parts of Manhattan were ignored.
At a news conference in Brooklyn on Wednesday morning, Mr. de Blasio said sanitation workers “had a long night, but they did a hell of a job protecting people although conditions were tough.”
When asked about reports that some neighborhoods went unplowed for hours, he said traffic was to blame.
“Nobody was treated differently,” he said. “I think people need to be mindful when they hurl those charges.”
One question which should be asked is if our Mayor is "Profiling or discriminating" on Upper East Side folks because most of them work, are...
Throughout Tuesday night and into the morning, with temperatures of 7 degrees in Central Park and wind gusts of more than 30 miles per hour making it feel like 15 below in some areas, workers scrambled to get to neighborhoods that remained overwhelmed by snow, including the Upper East Side and SoHo. By the morning rush, officials said, nearly every street had been plowed and most major problems were resolved.
But during the evening rush hour on Tuesday, as traffic conditions grew worse, some residents in Manhattan recalled that Mr. de Blasio was one of the leading critics of the response by his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, after a snowstorm in 2010. Implicit in his criticism then was that Mr. Bloomberg had forsaken the other boroughs in the days after the storm.
So when a city map tracking snow plowing showed that a wide swath of streets on the Upper East Side had not been cleared for hours as the storm worsened, many people took to social media raising the idea that perhaps it was the new mayor’s way of sending a message to the city’s wealthier residents — an idea immediately dismissed by city officials but that struck a chord with many residents after months of hearing Mr. de Blasio campaign on the theme of “A Tale of Two Cities.”
“Upper east side residents abandoned by de blasio stand on rooftops waiting for Fema or freshdirect,” one person noted sardonically on Twitter.
Many of those living and working in the neighborhood were also quick to voice their anger Wednesday morning.
“I’m just shocked how Lexington Avenue looks,” said Irma Ramos, 52, a manager at a packing store at Lexington and 70th Street. “I’ve been working here for nine years.”
The main reason that some areas were not plowed on Tuesday was traffic, city officials said. Additionally, the city’s plow map did not reflect a truck working on the Upper East Side because its GPS unit malfunctioned. Mr. de Blasio said that police officers were not posted to street corners to direct traffic during the height of the storm because the conditions were simply too dangerous.
The mayor’s forceful response was an attempt to quash the story line from taking root, but, despite his calling it patently false, it remained the focus of the news conference.
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