New York City is the biggest city in the world. Every winter, the city handles feet of snow via plows, salt, and other means of transportation and removal. That said, why did New York City get blindsided by the Christmas blizzard of 2010? Well, long story short, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. New York was completely unprepared for the blizzard that ate Christmas.
The big problem, of course, is that the blizzard happened right in the middle of Christmas weekend, one of the biggest travel weekends of the year. Everyone was short-staffed for the holidays, to boot. Train tracks weren’t cleared, plow drivers were snowed in, crews were inexperienced, transportation officials didn’t reroute buses to avoid snow-clogged streets, and the 911 system was completely swamped by emergency calls and unable to respond due to stalled vehicles and mountains of snow.
Long story short, everything that could go wrong did go wrong from the top on down, and everyone suffered for it. It goes without saying that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking a beating for the complete failure of his administration, but it’s not really his fault; this would’ve happened to anyone in his shoes, I’d expect.
Tags: New York City, New York, Christmas Blizzard, Christmas Blizzard 2010, New York Blizzard 2010, blizzards, New York caught off-guard by snow, blizzard beats New York City, Michael Bloomberg, natural disasters, snowpocalypse, winter storms, winter storm cripples New York