By Jeff Lipton
By 2 p.m., more than 20 inches of snow had piled up in local neighborhoods, blanketing parked cars and streets, crippling motorists' efforts to drive from one end of the Five Towns to the other. Drivers were strongly urged to stay off the roads, which were described as treacherous, at best. Later in the day, Nassau County issued a snow emergency.
One saving grace: Monday was Presidents Day, a federal, state and local holiday, with many residents home from work and government offices closed. Even if they hadn't planned to stay home, many area shopkeepers decided to stay closed for the day, leaving many Five Towns streets deserted.
Snowdrifts were five to six feet high in some locations. Snowplows often couldn't keep up with the accumulation during the late morning and afternoon, with a reported two inches of snowfall per hour, making many roads, especially side streets, impassable. Broadway in Woodmere is SUV haven, said one shopkeeper. If you have a Navigator or a Tahoe, you're lucky.
Broadway looks like a desert, only it's all white, said the storeowner, who added that he had about three feet of snow piled up in the parking lot behind his shop. The Five Towns is essentially shut down.
The schools were closed anyway due to midwinter recess, but had classes been in session, school certainly would have been cancelled. Blizzard conditions persisted for most of the day, as powerful winds gusted up to 45 miles per hour, causing near whiteout conditions. The temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, but the wind-chill made it feel like zero.
Village officials in the Five Towns quickly mobilized their snow emergency procedures, as snowplows and other snow-removal equipment quickly hit the streets.
The Long Island Power Authority reported only 51 outages throughout Long Island as of 10:30 a.m. due to the snow, because it was light and fluffy and not sticking to power lines.
A coastal flood warning was issued for homes along the shore, with waves measuring 15 to 20 feet. That's what I'm concerned about, said Susan Mahler, wife of Atlantic Beach Mayor Stephen Mahler. She was keeping her husband, who was in Florida, posted about the storm. We are all geared up for this emergency. She added that the mayor was trying to come home but was stuck in Florida due to horrible weather conditions along the East Coast.
Susan Mahler, who works for a Queens nursing home, said she had no way to get to work Ñ in a line of work where excuses are almost nonexistent. Even if you leave your car at the train station, it would be buried by the time you come home, she said.
From duct tape to ice melt
Donald Pearlstein, owner of Justin's Hardware, 1024 Broadway in Woodmere, said that since Wednesday, Feb. 12, business has been crazy. I needed a bodyguard the last three days, Pearlstein said on Monday.
He said the mayhem began last Wednesday, when residents heeded the advice of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to stock up on duct tape to seal windows in the event of a radiological or biochemical attack by terrorists.
Pearlstein said he sold 200 rolls of duct tape, in addition to 100 plastic drop cloths, and there was also a run on flashlights, transistor radios and batteries.
And then we went from duct tape to ice melt, Pearlstein said. Last Wednesday was Justin's Hardware's busiest day of the year before Sunday, when a steady stream of customers bought out his entire stock of 300 snow shovels and eight snow blowers, along with 480 bags of ice melt.
Greg Bosshardt, manager of the Foodtown at 1368 Peninsula Boulevard in Hewlett, said his store was able to keep up with the great demand for food supplies. Of course, there was a run on the staple items: bread, milk, cheese and eggs. Absolutely, we've had large crowds the past few days, Bosshardt said on Monday. People panic whenever there's storms like this or snow. Absolutely, this is when we have to expect this kind of business.
Sunday saw many residents flock to the store, which was obvious from the long checkout lines. There was a little letup on Monday, but not much. But during this kind of weather, people are more courteous and more understanding than a regular day, Bosshardt said.
A challenge for villages
Villages in the Five Towns struggled to keep up with the accumulating snow. Cedarhurst Mayor Andrew Parise summed up the snow accumulation in one word: Rough.
He said the white stuff was falling quicker than workers could plow it. We keep picking it up and it keeps coming down again. I don't know when it's going to stop, Parise said at about 1 p.m. on Monday.
Snow began tapering off and temporarily stopped at about 2 p.m. before it picked up steam about an hour later and kept falling into Monday night. There were accumulations of up to 26 inches by 5 p.m.
Parise said village workers plowed one street seven times since plows had hit the streets at 11 p.m. on Sunday and a resident from that street called to complain, When are they going to plow my street?
Parise said that 10 plows and two payloaders were out, along with two crews with snowblowers clearing the snow from village streets. We're still out there, but it doesn't look like we are because it's coming down so fast, he said.
Parise said snow was being dumped in Cedarhurst Park, but that he would have to hire someone to cart it away. Before all the snow was cleared, he estimated that the village would drop 100 tons of salt on the roads to keep them from icing over.
The snow removal will be costly to villages, which had to pay workers doubletime-and-a-half because Monday was a holiday. Cedarhurst paid about 15 workers at that rate, doing a number on the annual budget. You have to do what you have to do and then worry about the money later, Parise said. We'll have to take the money from someplace else.
The cars on the road are killing us, he added, even though there were fewer cars because of the holiday. The mayor said that one resident of Court Avenue, who is a nurse, said she had to get to a homebound elderly patient on Beach 3rd Street in Far Rockaway but couldn't get out of her block. Village workers could help her out, but asked her how she was going to navigate the rest of the streets on her way to Far Rockaway. She called the fire department and they couldn't do anything for her, he said.
Parise said that most residents heeded the warning to stay off the roads. Cedarhurst Avenue, which his office at Village Hall overlooks, was deserted on Monday. He has been a village official since 1971 and, he said, Since then I think this is the worst one we've ever had.
In the Village of Lawrence, 12 snowplows were working the 28 miles of village roads, said village administrator Peter Overs, who added that 40 tons of salt was dropped. We had a total of 17 people out [clearing streets]. We fared very, very well, all things considered, Overs said. We were very lucky.
In the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Neck and Woodsburgh, there were little if any complications experienced clearing the roads, said village officials.
And in the Town of Hempstead, which covers Inwood, Woodmere, North Woodmere, Hewlett and North Lawrence, 250 pieces of equipment hit the roads shortly after Town Supervisor Kate Murray declared a state of emergency at 10 p.m. on Sunday, said town spokeswoman Susie Trenkle. I think it's going well. And it's still going, Trenkle said.
Emergency services on the job
Fourth Precinct Police Lt. Larry Feffer said that other than several stuck cars, which police officers helped out of the snow, it was a very quiet Monday. He said police ambulance crews doubled up in vehicles and two officers were assigned to each patrol car to aid stranded motorists. Most people were home and didn't try to get out, he said.
Local hospitals were meeting the challenges presented by the weather. At St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, vans were dispatched to pick up staff members to make sure the hospital wasn't shorthanded. Most of the staff is in and all our floors are functioning. It's business as usual. There has been no negative impact, said Kathy Larosch, a nursing supervisor. We're coping.
The accumulation during this storm rivaled the blizzard of 1996. 2002-03 has been a particularly rough winter, with more than 40 inches of snow thus far and record low temperatures for lengthy periods of time.
