As New Storm Bears Down, City Redoubles Snow Efforts

Residents across Forest Hills are getting ready for another blast of winter weather, as the National Weather Service has predicted as much as 14 more inches of heavy snow starting Tuesday night and lasting through much of Wednesday.

Given Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city agencies are trying their best to ensure that the potential storm doesn’t turn into another debacle.

The forecast calls for heavy snow after 8 p.m. Tuesday night, with accumulation that could get as high as 9 inches. In addition to a possible 4-5 inches that could continue through the day on Wednesday, it’s enough to drive a snow-crazed city into even more of a frenzy.

On Tuesday morning, Bloomberg addressed the city, saying that plows are already getting into place to work on priority streets  early in the storm so that secondary streets can be gotten to sooner.

“We recognize that we did not do the job that New Yorker's rightly expect of us, Bloomberg said. “We intend to make sure that does not happen again.”

Still, the mayor said, the Wednesday commutes are likely to be ugly.

who was one of several political leaders who lambasted the city’s snow response last month, said he was confident the city would be on top of the coming storm.

“My sense is that the mistakes that were made in the prior blizzard are not going to be made again,” he said. “I don’t believe that the mayor will make the same mistake twice.”

Closer to home, said that there are a couple things residents can do to help the city prevent another episode like the blizzard of Dec. 26.

“The biggest piece of advice that I can give right now is clear out the fire hydrants,” Gulluscio said. “Be a good neighbor, do yourself a favor, because God forbid there is an emergency, we’re talking about snow drifts, blizzard conditions — the fire department would have to get to those.”

Gulluscio said that in the wake of snow response hearings at the city council on Monday and the media blitz that occurred in the days following the storm, the city is going to be on its best behavior for anything that might happen.

“I think everybody’s learned their lesson from the past snowstorm, I think every city agency in the world is going to be on top of this,” he added. “Everybody seems to be in tune to this particular snow storm, we’re going to do our extra best, not only our best but our extra best.”