Politics & Government

Once Upon a Snowstorm: A Timeline

Go into tonight's Community Board 11 meeting with your snow stories straight.

Few could forget the snowstorm that shut down the city last winter— and no number of adorable monikers (Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon being the season's big winners) could mitigate the blow of cancelled flights, closed roads and the inevitable onset of slow-burning insanity that comes from being trapped within one's own four walls for way, way too long.

Now, after a scalding summer and a mostly mild fall (mostly), Community Board 11 will tonight discuss . The Department of Sanitation’s deputy chief will be in attendance, as will plenty of agitated residents who remember all too well the political unrest that continued long after the flakes had ceased falling.

In case the details have melted from your mind, here's a recap of the stories we ran so many months ago, so you can attend tonight's meeting with rhetorical guns blazing:

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In late December of 2010, nearly piled up on New York City streets. Power was lost and local snow-removal efforts were .

But recovery efforts by the city were seen as lethargic, particularly in the outer boroughs. Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, on the part of the Department of Sanitation.

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Halloran claimed to have received this information from a handful of sanitation workers, but of the whistleblowers. (By the way, this and other Halloran-themed issues are at the center of this week's Village Voice cover story.)

The allegations in a mid-January , though Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office did acknowledge his administration's failure to adequately prepare and execute a plan to remove snow from primary and secondary roads.

The next snowstorm, which arrived in early January, than : Salt spreaders were disseminated and Global Positioning Devices were placed in Department of Sanitation vehicles to better monitor the locations of snowplows.

Now that it's time for the next round, residents must wonder: How will the city handle the snow this time? Only time will tell.


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