Smithtown Open For Business
Meteorologists predicted that the Blizzard of 2015 could be a storm of historical proportions. Governor Cuomo arrived on Long Island to meet with emergency preparedness teams and County Executives in both Nassau and Suffolk. The Long Island Rail Road was closed after 11:00 p.m. as well as the Long Island Expressed. There was a state-wide travel band, schools were shut down and all commerce came to a halting stop.
Well the Blizzard of 2015 fell short of a storm of historical proportions for the tri-state area; however, Suffolk County took the brunt of it. New York City didn’t get a Blizzard which is defined by wind and how rapidly the snow fell but Suffolk County did. Areas out East had three feet with about twenty to twenty-two inches falling around Smithtown.
Councilman Eddie Wehrheim is the new liaison to the Town of Smithtown Highway Department. He weighed in on how rapidly the Town of Smithtown was cleaned up. “They did a bang up job (highway department), it was quite a bit of snow and Suffolk County took the worst of the hit,” he explained.
Wehrheim was in constant contact throughout the storm with Mr. Valentine, the town’s Emergency Preparedness head and Mr. Jorgenson. He said both departments worked extremely well together.
“We had about one-hundred and thirty employees with one hundred pieces of equipment on the road,” he added. The seasoned town employee said they also hired seventy private contractors as well.
“We received ten plow vehicles from the state, assets that were delivered by Governor Cuomo, I believe he sent them to all towns around the Island,” he continued.
He says he would be remiss if he didn’t give credit to the Parks, Buildings and Grounds Department. “The crews from that department takes care of all the town facilities, they were working throughout the day Tuesday and all the town facilities opened and cleaned because of their efforts,” said Wehrheim.
Wehrheim was in Town Hall with Bob Creighton Tuesday as the storm lingered over Suffolk for longer than meteorologists expected.
Sandy Miranda was named to head up Parks, Buildings and Grounds last year. This was her first big storm as the Director of the department she has served in for decades. “I have to give my guys a lot of credit, we ran as smoothly as we could with very little equipment,” she explained. She added that they worked non-stop. “They are fantastic, they don’t get enough credit, they worked with no sleep and very little food as nothing was open,” She said the travel ban was instrumental to the cleanup of Smithtown. “It made it so much better, the roads were clear, people weren’t getting stuck,” she ended.
The Smithtown Highway Department is responsible for the maintenance and improvement of the town’s public road infrastructure. The infrastructure includes more than 470 miles of roads, drainage systems, recharge basins, sidewalks, driveway aprons, and curbs. Wehrheim says the Town of Smithtown is open for business. “It was a great collaboration of Highway, Town Safety and Park,” he ended.