Snow Emergency

Even in Alaska, where I served an Army hitch, a 30-inch snowfall is a serious matter. People can disappear into drifts and die. In Philadelphia, a city that often seems ill-prepared to deal with a three-inch snowfall, a storm of such magnitude can be a catastrophe. And no less fatal. Already, the Blizzard of '96 has claimed several lives - in two cases, they were elderly women who went in search of food. This is why I'm disappointed with Mayor Rendell's cavalier treatment of rowhouse residents who remain snowbound, their streets unplowed.

Now they tell us. Five days after the biggest snowstorm since the blizzard of 1993, city officials gathered in the cold yesterday in the 1500 block of Walnut Street to detail an action plan for snow emergencies. They called it the "speedy relief" policy. Not speedy enough, probably, for some residents, especially the ones still fighting their way through city side streets. Actually, the snow emergency plan would do nothing for the secondary and tertiary roads. It would, however, require people to move their cars from all streets declared snow emergency routes - a total of 110 miles of roadway throughout the city.

The Wings will not play the Buffalo Bandits at the HSBC Arena tonight in a National Lacrosse League game due to the snow emergency in the city. The game will be rescheduled at a later date. The Buffalo area has received more than four feet of snow this week with more forecast for this weekend. The Wings, who last played in Rochester on Dec. 15 against the Knighthawks, will not play again until Jan. 12, when they visit the New York Saints. After that, the Wings will raise their 2001 NLL championship banner when they host the Saints in the Wings' 2001-2002 regular-season home opener at the First Union Center on Jan. 18.

Streets Commissioner Lawrence Moy told City Council yesterday a snow emergency route plan with aggressive towing would save the city thousands of dollars and open up key streets after major storms. Moy said one attempt to clear part of North Broad Street two days after a major storm last winter cost the city $50,000. "If we had a snow emergency route system in effect, we could have been in on day one and cleared the streets curb to curb," Moy said. The administration proposal, contained in a bill introduced by Councilman Daniel McElhatton, calls for creating a key 110-mile road network where motorists face $150 fines plus storage fees if they fail to heed a two-to- three- hour warning to remove their cars.

Parking was part of the problem yesterday as snow piled up on suburban streets. Several towns in the area declared snow emergencies, meaning that residents could not park their vehicles on streets designated as snow-emergency routes. Many suburban communities have snow-emergency ordinances, which allow officials to prohibit parking on such streets or to limit parking to one side to allow snowplows to get through. The idea is to permit plowing from curb to curb on those routes.

Hours behind schedule but still packing a punch, snow arrived in Philadelphia on Friday night, covering streets and pushing the city into action. With 6 to 10 inches predicted, officials declared a snow emergency, effective at midnight. That meant that any car parked along a snow-emergency route might be towed. Indeed, the city wasted no time. Ten minutes after midnight, tow trucks were rumbling along Broad Street. In December, after years of inaction, the city cleared the street of vehicles after a snowfall, catching residents by surprise and putting a dent in their pocketbooks.

Preparing for Mother Nature's wily ways, City Council yesterday approved a new snow-emergency system that Rendell administration officials said would get the city's major arteries plowed quickly. Vehicles parked on designated routes would have to be moved within two hours after an emergency was declared or face towing. Owners would have to pay $150 to retrieve a towed vehicle. Administration officials have said that the Streets Department would be able to clear major streets from curb to curb without having to plow around parked cars.

The Upper Moreland Township Board of Commissioners has voted to endorse a land-development plan from Evergreen Realty for a shopping center along County Line Road. According to the plan, the center, which would be built between Shoemaker and Davisville Roads, would have five major tenants and five retail specialty stores. The center would have 265,000 square feet. The plan was approved by the Zoning Hearing Board in September. Commissioners told residents that the board's engineering committee would examine the plans more closely in an open meeting to be held after the developer decides the details.

Five inches of snow fell on Minneapolis one day last week, and from the time the first flake fell, I could almost hear the plows. Five inches isn't much by Minneapolis standards, but it's enough to trigger a snow emergency, the closest thing we have to martial law. A snow emergency lasts three days. On Day 1, the city plows what it calls "snow emergency routes," on Day Two, it attacks the odd-numbered sides of residential streets, and on Day Three, it clears the opposite, even-numbered sides.

The Daily News asked for suggestions to improve the city's snow emergency procedures. Some responses to "Snow Job" follow: One organization the city and Daily News could have tapped for volunteers during the snow emergency is Operation Town Watch. There are more than 11,100 active Town Watchers, but the city has no emergency preparedness plan that includes Operation Town Watch volunteers. Last year, the city purchased nearly 800 radios and licensed over 100 frequencies, establishing a radio communications network linking Town Watch patrols citywide.

SEATTLE - A monster Pacific Northwest storm coated the Seattle area in a thick layer of ice yesterday and brought much of the state to a standstill, sending hundreds of cars spinning out of control, temporarily shutting down the airport and knocking down so many trees that members of the Washington State Patrol brought chain saws to work. Oregon experienced torrential rain that swept away a car from a grocery store parking lot, killing a mother and her 1-year-old son. East of Seattle, a man was killed by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed, authorities said.

As Hurricane Irene barreled her way up the coast, MaryAnn Tierney stood outside her South Philadelphia home Thursday night unrolling blue tarp. She duct-taped the shield over the new rocking chairs out front and over the crack in the porch. She soon caught her neighbor's attention, prompting him to come over. "Is it supposed to rain?" he asked, blissfully ignorant of impending Irene. Was it ever. Soon, others followed the example provided by Tierney - at age 34 already somewhat of a disaster guru - in preparing for a storm that would leave thousands without power, flood homes and roads, and cause 46 deaths in 13 states.

IT'S THAT TIME of year again. The first snowfall, kids outside playing, parents taking their children sledding - and idiots fist-fighting over saved parking spots. It amazes me that we haven't seen a story gracing the front page regarding someone getting stabbed or shot. It's a disgrace that people are allowed to save parking spots. The property from the curb into the street belongs to the city. Everyone has to shovel out, and you can't claim your spot forever. I remove trashcans, cones, buckets and chairs from spots even when I'm not looking to park.

There's nothing better than football played in the snow - especially when viewed from the living room sofa with a cold beverage and warm flames crackling in the fireplace. That explains why many fans were rightly upset that the Eagles-Vikings game was moved to Tuesday night. But the decision by the NFL and the Eagles to postpone the game was the proper one. With a massive storm hammering much of the Northeast on Sunday, there were legitimate public safety concerns to warrant rescheduling the game.

There is no question the Minnesota Vikings have offended the gods of football this season and are sentenced to sail ghostlike through the rest of their schedule, a lost Flying Dutchman of a team paying for the hubris of its (former) captain. Navigating the treacherous Straits of Favre is not a mission for the fainthearted, apparently - or the very bright - and the Vikings are getting what they deserve for putting the rest of us through another season of All Brett All the Time. There are always innocent victims standing by the side of the road, of course, and here we are, trying to figure out if the Eagles will ultimately be helped or hurt by the Vikings-induced blizzard and the league's decision to move Sunday night's game to Tuesday night.

WE SHOULD NOT have been surprised. In an improbable season, this was just the latest unlikely development. The Eagles' game with the Minnesota Vikings last night was postponed until tomorrow, with the announcement coming nearly 8 hours before the scheduled kickoff and before yesterday's pending blizzard had actually began to blizz. "Due to public safety concerns in light of today's snow emergency in Philadelphia, tonight's Vikings-Eagles game has been postponed," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

WHEN ST. NICK flew into town amid clear skies Friday for another season of gift-giving, he didn't need Rudolph lighting his way. But the jolly old guy could have used the red-nosed reindeer's help yesterday. The snow that began falling during the morning yesterday and was still falling last night was not expected to accumulate anywhere near the record 23.2 inches that blanketed the city around this time last year. Eight inches had fallen at Philadelphia International Airport by about 8 p.m., the National Weather Service said.

THERE IS NOTHING more magical than football in the snow. If you grew up anywhere in the wintry half of this country, you probably have fond memories of hiking up your snow pants and sloshing around with your buddies and your Pete Rozelle-signed football in the backyard drifts - and the only thing that comes a close second to playing football in the snow is watching a classic NFL matchup in a furious downpour of the white stuff. In 1948, the Eagles won an NFL championship at Shibe Park in a raging blizzard, a game that was never forgotten by the 36,309 die-hards who didn't think twice about braving those conditions to watch history in the making.

DON SMOLENSKI'S holidays got complicated about 6:45 Christmas morning. "I took my dog for a walk. I came back and I had an e-mail from [team president] Joe Banner saying that the storm had flipped," Smolenski, the Eagles' chief operating officer, said yesterday from the snow-blasted NovaCare Complex. Smolenski, who was visiting family in Connecticut at Christmas, said he took a few hours to open presents with his wife and two sons, then got back together with Banner to start discussing the implications of yesterday's severe winter storm on the scheduled Eagles-Vikings game.

Game over; lose the lawn chairs With the snow and ice almost all gone, I would welcome an announcement from Mayor Nutter that the lawn-chair game for parking on city streets is no longer in play. Recently, I counted two lawn chairs, one trash can, and a large orange cone marking "taken" parking spots on my street. At night, my wife moved a chair, and the next morning, our car had the customary slash on the side. Just as the mayor made public his tolerance for the chairs during the snow emergency, he should now make public the end to this.