“ While we basically have a single outcome - the fiasco, there are likely multiple ingredients. There's probably more targets of blame than there was salt. I am just unwilling to accept anyone's defense of blaming others. There were many cases of the trucks driving with their plows up. Whose idea was that? Even if upper management or unions wanted that, the driver had the choice to listen to evil ideas or to do the right thing. The plowing of bike lanes on Ocean Parkway was utter stupidity, negligence, and cruelty. I bet the front line workers did not conjure up that one.

Upper management must take the heat, as in any situation. And we must remove political forces from this. This was a safety issue, and this fiasco is gross malpractice. Frankly, we should seek a recall election for Bloomberg, who spent four days mocking his constituents and blaming his own voters for this mess. He has not recognized that we were the victims here. Does he really care? ”

“ it took the sanitation dept this long to come up with these lame excuses???? ”

“ the mayor and other pols are trying to make the union a scapegoat for the ishandling of the whole situation ”

“ None of the excuses are lame. You try driving a something -ton garbage truck in deep snow without proper chains. While I believe these excuses, I do believe there were certain individuals who used the storm as an excuse for their personal vendetta against the city. So, the bottom line is everything ultimately falls on the mayor and his administration. They cut too much from the sanitation dept. This in turn caused some to be angry and do a slow down. Others did the best they could with limited resources -lousy chains, not enough personell for back up, not enough resources for any gabage truck, ambulance, fire truck or police car stuck in the snow -such as tow trucks and bulldozers. Also btw, being that I have been in many cities, garbage trucks are the worse type of truck to put a plow on. Ultimately, this what happens in a city that is run by liberals. They have money for every narishkeit, but not for the basic necessities of the city. So not only do I blame the Mayor and his administration, the blame also clearly lands on the shoulders of the whole city
council for all these failures. They are the ones who do all the pork-barrel spending. Time to throw all the bums out! ”

“ BS.

These may all be valid complaints that probably contributed in a very minor way, but putting the entire blame on faulty equipment and reduced manpower? yeah right.

even if we ignore all the anecdotal evidence of trucks driving with plows raised, workers taking hours-long breaks etc, are we really supposed to believe that they suddenly couldn't figure out how to put the plows together? or that all the chains suddenly snapped? ”

“ has anybody seen a sanitation truck picking up garbage? the snow has long melted, whose fault is it now? ”

“ None of the excuses are lame. You try driving a something -ton garbage truck in deep snow without proper chains. While I believe these excuses, I do believe there were certain individuals who used the storm as an excuse for their personal vendetta against the city. So, the bottom line is everything ultimately falls on the mayor and his administration. They cut too much from the sanitation dept. This in turn caused some to be angry and do a slow down. Others did the best they could with limited resources -lousy chains, not enough personell for back up, not enough resources for any gabage truck, ambulance, fire truck or police car stuck in the snow -such as tow trucks and bulldozers. Also btw, being that I have been in many cities, garbage trucks are the worse type of truck to put a plow on. Ultimately, this what happens in a city that is run by liberals. They have money for every narishkeit, but not for the basic necessities of the city. So not only do I blame the Mayor and his administration, the blame also clearly lands on the shoulders of the whole city
council for all these failures. They are the ones who do all the pork-barrel spending. Time to throw all the bums out! ”

“ You sound very angry. You didn't even read my whole post. I said a very small part of the blame falls on sanitation, but most of the blame is on ALL the politicians. You're just naive, all the politicians are all screaming because they don't want you to figure out it's all their fault. Trust me it's probably next to impossible to drive garbage trucks in deep snow without proper chains. Also, you screaming about them sleeping on the job, they had no choice. They weren't allowed to leave without a replacement. And there were no replacements because of budget cuts. You would probably collapse after 3 hours of hard labor, let alone 12-15. What you don't seem to understand is that driving with plows up doesn't mean anything. There is an order to which they plow -first primary streets and then secondary. They probably were using a street that wasn't supposed to be plowed yet as a route to where they had to plow! Unless you know from the driver or supervisor this street was assigned to them and they didn't do it anyway. I doubt you know this. I was always told that when someone points fingers, 4 point back at them. The Mayor and his administration and the City Council are all at Fault! ”

“ What world are you living in? A lot of the streets are clean, but the "snow has long melted"? If they have 3 times the amount of garbage as usual and they have limited amount of personnel due to budget cuts; you expect them to get rid of it all in the same amount of time? NY'ers are a bunch of spoiled whiners. You want the gov. to have great city services, but you don't want to pay for it with increased taxes! ”