Franklin Square, Elmont residents face blizzard’s lasting effects

Although the National Weather Service issued last week’s Blizzard Warning to be in effect from last Sunday morning to Monday evening for Nassau County, the storm’s effects have lasted much longer.

In Franklin Square and Elmont, the more than a foot and a half of snow the blizzard brought caused many street-parked cars to be barricaded and roads to be impassible until late last week.

Pat Nicolosi, president of the Elmont East End Civic Association, said several residents were unable to move their cars until after Dec. 29, due to streets not being thoroughly plowed.

Nicolosi also said garbage pick-up was delayed for days due to unplowed streets. Garbage trucks finally arrived Wednesday of last week, and later in some areas, he said, despite the dire need for trash pick-up due to the Christmas holiday.

On Dec. 27, a fire truck couldn’t get to the Elmont Senior Center due to the unplowed roads, he added.

Nicolosi said he believes storm effects would have been less detrimental if plowing trucks were sent out faster, and street parking in Franklin Square and Elmont were more heavily regulated by the Town of Hempstead. He added that parking in the community is overflowing due to a high demand for affordable housing, which the town could work harder to provide.

“Many young people in the area are living in basement apartments,” said Nicolosi. “They have to park in the street.”

He added that the community has dealt with similar, inadequate storm clean-up for eight years, beginning with a blizzard in 2003.

Susie Trenkle-Pokalsky, a town spokeswoman, said the town sent out trucks to salt streets around 11 a.m. Dec. 26.

“As of Tuesday, we had used 8,000 tons of salt,” Trenkle-Pokalsky said. “They salted, they plowed, and then they salted … our crews did the best job they could.”

The town spent more than $1.3 million due to the storm, she added.

“This was a difficult storm. Mother Nature threw a lot at us during this storm,” Trenkle-Pokalsky said, adding that every street in the Franklin Square and Elmont community was plowed.

“We had over 200 pieces of equipment out on Sunday. The wind situation obviously impacted a lot of their procedures,” she explained. “And when people shovel snow into the road, they make things more difficult for other drivers.”

Sandra Smith, chair of the Elmont Coalition, said, to her knowledge, the town’s trucks adequately plowed the community.

“I live right off of Dutch Broadway, and they came through and plowed multiple times.”

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