By KEITH GRANT and ANGELA MARSHALL
The storm came earlier than expected, dumping more than four inches by 8 a.m. By mid-morning, much of the metropolitan area was paralyzed as the snow kept falling. Banks, stores and other businesses closed their doors and sent home workers who had made the dangerous trek in. Even mail delivery was brought to a halt in Long Beach after early attempts to defy the storm failed.
"Everybody showed up at 7 a.m. and we sent all of the carriers out," Long Beach postmaster Irv Kaminsky said. "They delivered about 25 percent of the mail, but then it got too dangerous." Letter carriers were called back at about 11 a.m. and deliveries was held off until Tuesday. Kaminsky said the day was perhaps the third or fourth in his 23 years with the postal services that mail delivery was canceled.
"We go out in anything, but when it gets to the point of being unsafe you've got to call it off," he said.
Despite well-publicized warnings by officials to stay home, many people were spotted out on the roads early Saturday morning across Nassau County, making the job of cleaning up from the storm harder. Most locals, though, apparently were wise enough to stay in for the day. Long Beach fire chief Brian Hocheiser said it was a quiet day for his emergency crews.
"We were on a snow stand-by, so our guys were at their stations and ready to go," he said. "We had a couple of simple ambulance calls, but nothing unusual. Looks like everyone heeded good advice and stayed inside."
Inside and well stocked, it seemed. Most grocery stores were raided the evening before the storm hit. By 5 p.m. Friday, a dozen cars at a time lined up at Dairy Barn.
But aside from food, beverages and videos, many residents prepped themselves for the inevitable post-storm clean-up.
"We did fantastic business," Frank O'Rourke of O'Rourke Hardware said. The store moved a heavy supply of shovels, gloves, and calcium and rock salt, much of which was stored up from Long Beach's last snow storm nearly five years ago.
"We sold about 650 shovels and 11 tons of calcium and rock salt," O'Rourke said. Many people started shoveling by late afternoon, in some cases just due to cabin fever.
"I just couldn't stay in the house, anymore!" Kerry Weiser said as she shoveled outside her father's W. Chester St. home.
A few residents called the Herald throughout the weekend to share stories of neighbors helping to dig eachother out of the snow, and one grateful woman called after a stranger helped her out of a rather bad parking situation.
"There are wonderful people in the world!" she said after the man apparently helped her drive clear of a snow bank.
Long Beach city crews stayed busy doing plenty of clearing, themselves, right up to New Year's Eve. City Manager Bruce Nyman said employees worked 12 hour shifts over a 36 hour period to clear streets, using just about every vehicle the city had.
"Every available truck got a plow on it," he said. The efforts resulted, he said, in one of the best reported clean-up efforts in the county.
"I'm hearing from people that we did a great job," Nyman said. "Certainly compared to our neighbors. Does that mean there's not a street left to do? Sure, there is. But from what I've been hearing we did pretty well."
Several residents at the Tuesday night City Council meeting agreed, praising the city for its efforts, but the sentiment was not unanimous.
"Up until this afternoon, Minnesota Avenue was a ski trail," said West End resident Stephen Fine. Resident Joe Marra claimed that the city's municipal parking lot not plowed until Tuesday afternoon, after most commuters had already struggled into difficult spots. "The end result of that was 200 cars were blocked in," he said. Several similar complaints were made throughout Tuesday to the Herald and the City Manager's office. No officials argued that the city hadn't dropped the ball - or the shovel, if you will - on that job, but ultimately it was felt that Long Beach was left in significantly better shape than much of Nassau County.
The county and the Town of Hempstead each had more than 100 plows and other snow-clearing equipment on the streets, while villages such as Rockville Centre, Valley Stream and Lynbrook also put their plows to the pavement to get the streets clear in time for New Year's Eve celebraters.
However, many people were less than thrilled with the results. Charles Kee of Rockville Centre called the village's attempts to remove snow an absolute disgrace, among the worst he has seen in 50 years. On Tuesday morning, he was still helping neighbors when they got stuck in the snow in front of his home on Forest Avenue.
Anthony Cancellieri, Village Administrator, said he was "very, very unhappy with the results." All supervisors in affected departments were called to a meeting on Tuesday morning and told that the work was unacceptable. "We're replowing the entire village as we speak," Cancellieri said.
The Administrator said he did not believe the performance had anything to do with current contract negotiations between RVC and its civil-service association workers. "We goofed," Cancellieri said, blaming problems on the need for better supervision.
With 16 inches of snow, Oceanside was the community hardest hit. According to Bob Davis, superintendent of highway maintenance for Nassau County, Oceanside was hit earlier than most and it made all the difference in cleanup. On Tuesday morning, County workers were still trying to make some main roads passable.
Making roads even more treacherous, Davis said, was snow dumped there by private contractors. After County plows cleared Long Beach Road Saturday morning, large amounts of snow were dumped back on it. "The road looked like it was never plowed," Davis said.
Pushing snow onto streets, whether by a contractor or a resident, is illegal. However, enforcement is hard, Davis said.
Nassau Leg. Joseph Scannell (D-Baldwin) said he was amazed at how little snow had been cleared, considering how much advance publicity the storm received. He blamed the County's slow reaction on a lack of workers. "This is the reason we've been pushing to rehire people in the Department of Public Works," he said.
The Town of Hempstead said it held an emergency meeting before the storm to go over strategy to combat massive amounts of the white stuff. The Town said it was ready with 300 workers and 350 pieces of equipment.
"We had all the senior management here to make sure equipment and personnel were ready to go," a spokesperson said. "We wanted to make sure the holiday weekend was safe."
As of Tuesday, the spokesperson said, Town crews were still working around the clock to improve road conditions.
Although LIPA had prepped for a high number of outages, the storm left few people without power. "It was nowhere near what we had feared," said Michael Lowndes, manager of media relations for LIPA.
