Tuesday night a snowstorm is expected to hit New York City. While this snowstorm is not expected to be as strong as the last snowstorm that hit New York City on December 26, 2010, city officials are taking precautions to ensure that there is no repeat of the failed clean-up effort by the Department of Sanitation that took place during the last storm. As many New Yorkers will recall, the recent snowstorm which hit New York City just after Christmas paralyzed much of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs for days. There were rumors that the Department of Sanitation purposefully delayed its response to the storm to make a point about an unpopular reduction in its workforce but Deputy Mayor for Operations, Stephen Goldsmith, has denied those rumors.
During a City Council hearing today officials examined the city's response to the post-Christmas snowstorm. Officials said that the mayor and deputy mayor for operations were never informed of the decision by the sanitation and transportation commissioners to not declare an emergency. In addition, officials testified that more than half of the Department of Sanitation's trucks don't have radios and that the city's emergency operations center was not staffed until just an hour before the heaviest snowfall of the storm began. "Based on what we know now," said Stephen Goldsmith, "an emergency declaration of some sort would have been helpful." New Yorkers will have to wait and see if the city and Department of Sanitation can handle this snowstorm better than they handled the post-Christmas snowstorm.
The National Weather Service reports that the New York City region will wake up Wednesday morning under a blanket of snow. It expects at least six inches, but possibly as many as ten or eleven, to fall on New York City during the storm, with wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour. The heaviest snowfall of the storm is expected to occur Wednesday morning.
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