OMAHA CONTACT NUMBERS
For updates on the city's snow-removal efforts: 444-3460
For requests for snow removal on public streets: 444-4919
To report a sidewalk that hasn't been cleared: 444-5283. (By city code, all city sidewalks are to be shoveled within 24 hours after a snowstorm ends.)
Mayor's hot line: 444-5555
Those abominable snow mounds along metropolitan Omaha's traffic arteries are the bane of pedestrians and property owners alike.
Three days after a big snowstorm whacked Nebraska and Iowa, Friday found people still walking in traffic lanes of Omaha streets because sidewalks were buried under snowdrifts and the icy detritus of snowplows.
Many business and home owners had yet to plow, snow-blow or chop paths through the formidable mounds.
The snow-and-ice pack ranged from 2 feet deep to, at some corners, more than 5 feet high.
“A lot of the time you have to walk in the street,'' Derek Levasseur said as he waited at 30th and Cuming Streets for a bus ride to his job, cooking at Maplewood Lanes. “That would be scary enough if the streets were dry, but with the snow and ice, it's even scarier.”
The sidewalk beneath Levasseur's feet was clear and dry. But it was a different story near his north Omaha home near 30th Street and Curtis Avenue.
“There's a lot of older people who haven't shoveled, and a lot of the sidewalks were plowed under,” Levassuer said.
His experience appeared typical in a drive through several parts of Omaha and Bellevue on Friday afternoon.
Near 31st and Leavenworth Streets, for example, five people in a span of 15 minutes trudged through the slippery slush of eastbound traffic lanes because a long stretch of sidewalk was buried.
Meanwhile, across Leavenworth to the north, businessman Chris Kraft steered a snowblower outside Kraft Furniture while a contractor removed the plowed mounds with a skid loader.
How does a property owner deal with that kind of mess?
Kraft motioned toward the roaring loader, like a game show model gesturing to a new car.
“That's pretty much it, unless you have a plow truck,” he said.
At Ideal Hardware near 39th and Cuming Streets, Scott Busekist has hacked through snowplow-pack for 25 years, with help from co-workers.
It was all manual labor — shovel, ice pick — until the store bought an old snowblower three years ago.
The snowblower helps, Busekist said. But it was still slow going Friday.
“After the plows have been through and cleared all the way to the side of the road, and then it freezes overnight, it's a little bit of work,” Busekist said.
Workers had to push the snowblower in, clear a little chunk, back up, and do it again. And that was after a worker picked up big ice chunks by hand and tossed them aside.
In Bellevue, 15-year-old Brandon Lewis wielded an ice chipper and a shovel outside his family's home at Lloyd Street and Skyview Drive.
He had worked an hour to clear 5 feet of sidewalk of icy plowed snow about 3 feet deep. He hoped to finish another 6 feet to reach the corner Friday night, then start uphill today.
“It's OK,” Brandon said. “Gets me out of the house.”
Government subdivisions have a variety of rules and enforcement measures for sidewalk clearing. An Omaha ordinance requires property owners to clear their walks within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall.
It's property owners' responsibility, and pedestrians shouldn't have to walk in the street, said Ron Gerard, spokesman for Mayor Jim Suttle.
Safety is the most important thing, he said, noting that Suttle's plan to plow snow to the middle of some downtown streets was designed to keep it off sidewalks. That plan may be expanded, he said, and he invited people to forward their reviews to the Mayor's Office.
If the city receives a complaint about sidewalks, inspectors will go out, review the walk and talk with the property owner, said Scott McIntyre, city street maintenance engineer.
If the owner doesn't clear the walk, the city can hire a contractor to do so, then bill the owner for the cost — whether it's snow blown by the wind or pushed by city plows.
“But it's just not realistic to expect some of this snow to be cleared away from some of these locations right away,” McIntyre said.
In the meantime, as a two-hour drive around town and a three-mile run through downtown Omaha Friday showed, drivers should expect to share the road with pedestrians for a while.
“It's hard to keep an eye out for pedestrians and cyclists when you're just trying to drive straight in these conditions,” said Julie Harris of Activate Omaha.
It's an opportunity, she said, for people to be neighborly and help neighbors clear walks. As for drivers, she said, “Everybody's got to kind of slow down and do their part.”
Contact the writer:
444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
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