Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Holds a Press Conference to Provide Weather Updates
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good afternoon, New York. Tomorrow, our city will face its second snowstorm in less than a month and our first blizzard since 2016. Right now, forecasts predict light snow will begin to fall tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Over the course of the day, it will grow heavier with intense snowfall beginning at 6 p.m. and dangerous winds increasing overnight. Conditions that will persist through Monday morning and into the evening. We are now expecting between 13 to 17 inches of snow, but there is a slight chance we may see up to 20 inches, if not more. This means we are forecast to receive up to 6 inches more than we received a few weeks ago. New Yorkers can expect that Monday morning commute will be extremely hazardous with heavy snowfall and peak winds coinciding to create slippery conditions and greatly reduced visibility. Combined with daytime temperatures slipping above freezing and overnight lows dropping to the low 20s, this snowfall will melt [and] then refreeze, resulting in dangerously icy sidewalks and streets. I am asking all New Yorkers to stay inside and stay off the roads for your safety. These have the potential to be even more hazardous conditions than we faced the last time around. To protect our homeless and most vulnerable New Yorkers, Code Blue operations will take effect once again starting at 4 p.m. this afternoon. That means our dedicated outreach teams will intensify their operations, traversing all five boroughs 24/7 to bring those most at risk inside. Let me be clear, no one will be denied shelter in our city. We want every New Yorker who needs help seeking warmth to be able to find it. We will have 18 warming buses, 11 Health + Hospitals warming spaces, 13 school warming centers open across the city, and we are redeploying H+H mobile warming units to provide clinical support: socks, gloves, and warm food. We are also keeping our on-point overdose prevention centers open overnight through the blizzard. You will be able to find the locations of all of our warming centers on a LinkNYC kiosk by 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. Once again, I'm asking that New Yorkers continue to look out for their neighbors. If you see someone in need, please call 311 immediately so that outreach workers and first responders at the FDNY and NYPD can provide assistance. For those who may not have easy access to a phone, you can call 311 directly from our LinkNYC kiosks to seek help. If you are having issues with heat and hot water in your apartment, call your landlord first, and then if you do not hear back quickly, call 311. We have inspectors and staff working overtime this weekend at HPD. NYCHA residents in need of non-emergency assistance should call the customer contact center at 718-707-7771 or submit work tickets to the MyNYCHA application. DSNY has already begun pre-snow operations, preparing equipment, mounting plows and chains [on] over 2,200 vehicles, and loading up more than 700 salt spreaders. When more than two inches of snow have fallen, plows will be dispatched across our city. New Yorkers will be able to monitor their work in real time via our plow tracker at nyc.gov/PlowNYC. Tomorrow morning this fleet will roll into action with over 2,600 sanitation workers beginning 12-hour shifts salting as the first snow begins to fall before commencing plowing operations once snow has reached the plowable depth of two inches. While DSNY focuses on snow clearing and responding to this blizzard, they will be running at least one day behind on garbage and recycling collection. DOT crews have already begun pre-treating road surfaces for Sunday and will follow an extended schedule on Monday to ensure that our bridges and our highways are treated and cleared throughout the storm. The Parks Department will also be mobilizing their own fleet to clear over 2,000 miles of pathways in parks across our city. We are currently anticipating some level of flooding in Jamaica Bay, Staten Island, and The Battery. If that occurs, the city will deploy field response teams and determine further interagency actions from DEP, DOT, and FDNY. We are always seeking ways to improve our efforts to support and deliver for New Yorkers. That's why, ahead of this storm, our agencies have made several changes to enhance our storm preparedness and service citywide. Here is what we are doing differently. We have brought in outside mechanical snow clearing equipment ahead of the snowfall, [which is] an unprecedented early activation of this resource. We are expanding geocoded tracking of bus stops, unsheltered stops, crosswalks, and pedestrian ramps to improve the rate at which they are cleared. We are also mandating that a path of at least four feet must be cleared across all sidewalks to accommodate wheelchairs. All operational agencies will be paying increased attention to clearing fire hydrants, crosswalks, and bus stops around their property as part of our primary snow clearing operation. Lyft has committed to greatly expand the number of Citi Bike Station snow clearing crews, expediting their snow removal efforts. DOT will remain in contact with Lyft throughout the storm. DSNY will also deploy over 1,000 emergency snow shovelers beginning Sunday night, another early activation. To aid this effort, we have added an additional evening shift with 300 shovelers in advance of the height of the storm, and we're utilizing 33 DSNY vans and two DSNY buses to transport shovelers where they're needed faster. And for those who want to do more to help your neighbors and earn some extra cash, you too can become an emergency snow shoveler. Just show up at your local sanitation garage between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. tomorrow with your paperwork, which is accessible online at nyc.gov/snow, and you can get started right away. While we have not yet made a final decision regarding in-person school for Monday, we are monitoring the conditions and will communicate a decision to students, teachers, and parents by noon tomorrow. The safety of our students and our staff remains our top priority. Alternate side parking will be suspended for Monday. I urge all New Yorkers to sign up for Notify NYC by texting NOTIFYNYC to 692-692. This will allow you to stay informed on the latest forecasts and conditions. You can also visit nyc.gov/BeReady for additional information. As always, New York, stay warm, stay inside, stay prepared, and stay safe. Thank you very much, and now we are going to turn it over to our NYCEM Commissioner Christina Farrell.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, I'll start with your second question and go to your first. You heard this from MTA Chair Lieber. The forecast has been changing day after day. We saw on Friday there was an expectation that the likelihood was that we were going to face maybe three to four inches of snow. Quickly that then changed, and we're now looking at a blizzard. So, we want to make sure that we make a decision based on up-to-date and accurate information. We know that by Sunday at noon, we will have the information necessary to be able to speak about the nature of conditions Monday morning and what safety will demand that we do when it comes to in-person instruction for our students and our staff. So, by tomorrow at noon, we will be making that decision, and we will ask that all New Yorkers prepare in every which way they can, because this is a serious storm that we're looking at. It exceeds the snowfall that we saw in the previous storm. It is, in fact, a blizzard as opposed to just a winter storm. And we will get back to you on the exact pay for emergency snow shovelers. Thank you.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI will say that our focus in the aftermath of the prior storm was to ensure that every single, not only city agency, but also private partner understood the responsibility that we have to deliver for New Yorkers, and the responsibility that extends to New Yorkers who are pedestrians, who are cyclists, who are bus riders, subway riders, or who are driving their cars. And so, thanks to the advanced work in preparation for this blizzard, there is going to be additional personnel committed, for example, from a private entity like Lyft, to ensure that we're actually clearing out additional Citi Bike docks. This also goes to what was being shared earlier around the clearing, not just of sheltered bus stops, but unsheltered bus stops as well, as well as the reminder to private property owners as to what the requirements are. DSNY last time around put forward, I think, more than a thousand violations that came from that. 4,000 violations from that. They will continue to do enforcement. However, our desire is not to have to enforce this, but rather to seek compliance from the beginning of it.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, our focus over the course of this storm is not going to be on physical infrastructure. It's going to be on people. Getting homeless New Yorkers inside. There will be no cleanups over the course of this storm. Our focus is going to be utilizing every tool that we have to connect homeless New Yorkers with a safe haven, with a shelter, with a warming bus, and we will be sure to be able to provide those homeless New Yorkers with a wide variety of options. Because what we found over the course of the prolonged Code Blue is that we needed to have a multiplicity of options that we were putting forward to homeless New Yorkers because the same New Yorker who may be resistant to getting on a warming bus may be willing to get into an H+H warming center. And so, that is why we continue to put forward all of these different options. Additionally, we have a number of outreach workers who are going to be traversing the city 24/7 looking to make that connection with homeless New Yorkers as well as the utilization of LinkNYC.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, first I have to say it is hard to see how you are dressed for the perfect day today and be speaking about a blizzard tomorrow, but that is where we are. We hold ourselves to the highest standards in our administration, and that means that we are never satisfied with what we are delivering to New Yorkers. And I'm thankful, frankly, to be surrounded not only today but every day by incredible New Yorkers who understand that we have to push ourselves. And so, we look at this blizzard that is coming to New York City, and we are looking to utilize every tool that was successful last time around and then utilize new tools as well. You heard the [acting] commissioner from DSNY [say] that we are bringing earlier activation of outside mechanisms [than] we've ever seen precedent for. This is all going back to how can we clear the streets as fast as possible? How can we respond to the snow as fast as possible? And what I will say is, unlike in the prior storm, we are predicted to have the assistance of Mother Nature this time around. What I mean by that is that the prior storm was followed by one of the most sustained spells of cold weather the city has ever seen. We are anticipating dipping into the low 20s over the next few days. However, we do anticipate reaching into the 40s by Wednesday. That will be incredibly helpful towards our city's recovery from this snowstorm.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, that continues to be the focus for our DSNY workers. So, what we are utilizing is even more workers per shift than we saw the last time around. We have more than 2,600 workers per 12-hour shift. Those are beginning tomorrow. They will be supplemented by even more emergency snow shovelers who will be assisting them across the city. And what we are talking about is not only a response for tomorrow, but a response for Monday, for Tuesday, for Wednesday, and beyond. Now, we've seen that with the weather conditions that this city saw over the last few weeks, that snow hardened and came into an ice that is only now melting thanks to the assistance of the sun. Over the course of that period, the city did utilize a number of snow melters that we saw across our city in every borough. The city continues to operate one side of snow melting to ensure that the hardest snow to break down is being put through the kinds of mechanisms that can actually dissolve it into liquid. Thank you all so much. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Holds a Press Conference to Provide Weather Updates.