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Police still searching for vehicles in fatal Hanover Township hit-and-run

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Flood watch issued for Luzerne County until Saturday

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; On Tuesday, March 14, Winter Storm Stella pounded the city with 22.1 inches of snow, a single-day record for the Diamond City.</p><p>Snow was left piled high &#8212; higher than in recent memory &#8212; not only on driveways and sidewalks, but also on streets, roads and major highways.</p><p>Schools and businesses were shut down, and workers were left to either toil from home or clear their pathways to productivity, a back-breaking chore whether done with a snow blower or shovel.</p><p>The storm basically brought life in Northeastern Pennsylvania to a halt for at least 24 hours. Some areas had to wait longer to get snow cleared, and many alleys were left unplowed because trucks couldn&#8217;t get through and there was no place to push the snow.</p><p>In a time of limited budgets, reduced state and federal funding, and public backlash to any tax increases, the question still must be asked: Did the city and surrounding towns do all they could to return us to normal life as quickly as possible, or could they have performed better?</p><p>After Times Leader discussions with municipal leaders and readers, and after a review of the newspaper&#8217;s solicitation for comments on Facebook last week, it&#8217;s clear the majority of people were generally satisfied with the snow-removal effort.</p><p>&#8220;I think the towns did an excellent job given the large amounts of snow that we received,&#8221; one reader said. Noted another: &#8220;Little towns were great, but people don&#8217;t realize how big Wilkes-Barre is. You can&#8217;t expect record-breaking snow to be cleared quicker than it came down.&#8221;</p><p>Several readers, however, expressed concerns or complaints.</p><p>Marc Brooks of Plymouth said he didn&#8217;t see one plow truck until almost Thursday afternoon on his street, Dennis Lane. That was a full two days after the biggest part of the storm hit.</p><p>&#8220;I called the borough building multiple times, and all they told me was they were aware and will get there soon,&#8221; Brooks said in an email response to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/timesleader" target="_blank">Times Leader Facebook</a> posting. &#8220;We have a 20-month-old little girl, and God forbid if there was an emergency, no one could&#8217;ve gotten up here for any reason.&#8221;</p><p>Brooks intended to take his complaints to a borough council meeting March 14, but it was canceled due to the storm and rescheduled for the following week at 10 a.m., making it nearly impossible for him and other working people to attend.</p><p>Aaron Delaney of Nanticoke said his street &#8212; an alley between Prospect and Market streets &#8212; has never been plowed during the seven years he has lived there. After the recent snowstorm, Delaney said he called City Hall and left a message.</p><p>&#8220;Whether or not it was successful, I&#8217;ll never know,&#8221; Delaney said in an email.</p><p>Brooks and Delaney represent a segment of the population more focused on municipalities&#8217; lack of response &#8212; not just in clearing streets and making them passable, but in replying to questions from residents.</p><p>Among the concerns and comments on the Times Leader Facebook page and in emails to the paper:</p><p>&#8226; Did elderly residents get help to dig out &#8212; especially if family members couldn&#8217;t get there because of the road conditions and lack of parking?</p><p>&#8226; A town in New York received 21 inches of snow, but by the middle of the next day, all travel issues were resolved. When a person who was there returned to Luzerne County, their street still had snow all over it. &#8220;Public and private plow drivers work hard, but things weren&#8217;t perfect. Maybe we can learn and make it better next time,&#8221; that reader said.</p><p>A few readers said Wilkes-Barre was &#8220;a mess,&#8221; but several cited good road conditions in Plains Township, the Back Mountain, Kingston, Forty Fort, Swoyersville and other towns.</p><p>One reader said officials knew the storm was coming but &#8220;failed miserably&#8221; in their preparation. Another reader took the middle road, saying: &#8220;You can&#8217;t control the weather.&#8221;</p><p><strong>Towns respond</strong></p><p>Butch Frati, Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s director of operations, was pleased with the city&#8217;s response during the storm, which broke the previous one-day snowfall record of 18.7 inches, set on March 13, 1993.</p><p>Frati said the city was in emergency response mode from 7 a.m. March 14 through March 18. During that time, he said the city&#8217;s fire and police departments responded to more than 200 emergency calls.</p><p>&#8220;We didn&#8217;t miss one of them,&#8221; he said. &#8220;How can anyone say we didn&#8217;t do a very good job? This was an unprecedented storm. We&#8217;ve never had to deal with that much snow.&#8221;</p><p>Frati said Department of Public Works employees took turns working 16-hour shifts. All 40 DPW employees worked on snow removal, suspending other city services, such as garbage pickup and recycling. He said a few drivers worked 24-hours shifts to help in the effort. Frati noted there are 605 streets in Wilkes-Barre, totaling 127 miles of roadway. He said a majority of the streets are narrow, making it impossible to plow when the snow reaches a depth of 22 inches.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nowhere for that much snow to go,&#8221; Frati said. &#8220;It will bog down the plow and cover parked vehicles.&#8221;</p><p>Frati said the city budgeted $102,673 for snow removal in 2017, but the cost to remove snow that fell March 14-15 &#8212; a total of 23.6 inches &#8212; was at least six times that. The city submitted a request to be reimbursed for $678,000 in snow-removal costs. Actual expenses for the entire storm cleanup, still not calculated, will be much higher.</p><p>Lucy Morgan, director of the Luzerne County Emergency Management Agency, said county municipalities and non-profits tallied $2.79 million in cleanup costs in an effort to get federal funding.</p><p>That was more than double the funding-help threshold set for the county, and it was combined with totals from other counties to reach or top the $18.2 million state threshold.</p><p>However, it was learned Monday that Pennsylvania failed to hit that mark, meaning the federal reimbursement issue likely is closed, although other avenues could be pursued.</p><p><strong>PennDOT praised</strong></p><p>In the overall picture, Frati said the city couldn&#8217;t budget for a storm that &#8220;never happened before.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;That would be like budgeting for an outbreak of smallpox,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Mayor Tony George said his administration would like to have an opportunity to increase the budget to cover snow-removal expenses, but no additional money is available.</p><p>Tyler Ryan, the mayor&#8217;s spokesperson, said the city finished 2016 with more than a $1 million deficit, which the mayor predicted in January 2016.</p><p>&#8220;This year, the budget was cut as much as it could be; however, with multiple unpredicted emergencies and little cash reserve, the George administration is stretching to meet the 2017 budget,&#8221; Ryan said in an email. &#8220;The Mayor does not see any extra funding available in the foreseeable future for snow removal.&#8221;</p><p>Frati said if the city doesn&#8217;t get reimbursed for the storm-related expenses, many scheduled projects could be delayed or never completed. Frati couldn&#8217;t specify which projects; he said the city, if not reimbursed, will have to evaluate and prioritize which projects are to be done and when.</p><p>&#8220;You have to respond &#8212; you have to spend this money,&#8221; Frati said. &#8220;If we didn&#8217;t, can you imagine the responses/complaints we would get?&#8221;</p><p>James May, a spokesman for PennDOT, said his agency has received more compliments in the past two weeks than during any two-week period in the six years he has worked there.</p><p>&#8220;In fact, we have received so much positive feedback that we set up a bulletin board outside our office to display all the notes of thanks we have received from the public,&#8221; May said. &#8220;I&#8217;d guess that easily, more than 90 percent of the feedback we received was positive.&#8221;</p><p>May said PennDOT crews worked around the clock to clear roads. He said at times, the snow was coming down at rates of 3 to 4 inches per hour. May said no emergency vehicles were hampered.</p><p>&#8220;In fact, our Luzerne County crew assisted with the transport of a 23-month-old child to Danville to receive life-saving treatment,&#8221; May said. &#8220;Our crews did an amazing job in clearing the roads during a record snowstorm.&#8221;</p><p>In Kingston, Administrator Paul Keating was &#8220;extremely pleased&#8221; with the borough&#8217;s response to the storm. He said more than 400 letters were delivered on the Sunday before Stella hit to residents in congested travel areas, alerting them of Kingston&#8217;s plan to remove snow in the event of a significant storm.</p><p>Keating said heavy equipment was staged in designated areas March 13.</p><p>Despite those preparations, the storm proved to be a significant challenge on small streets and alleys because snow had to be removed &#8212; to municipal parks and empty lots &#8212; instead of plowed. Keating said Kingston spent $51,390 on sub-contractors during its 48-hour snow-removal detail.</p><p>&#8220;The majority of our residents were complimentary and understanding of the municipality&#8217;s efforts in dealing with a storm of such magnitude,&#8221; said Keating. &#8220;We did have a small percentage of residents that were impatient with the pace of our cleanup efforts. The complaints were generally related to the opening of very narrow streets and alleys that could not be plowed.&#8221;</p><p>Now that the snow is mostly gone, Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s Frati acknowledged there is room for improvement.</p><p>&#8220;We can always do better, but to say we didn&#8217;t do a great job is unfair,&#8221; he said. &#8220;In a matter of days, we were back to normal from the heaviest snowfall ever recorded in the city.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">A crew member from Popple Construction dumps snow in the parking lot of the Toyota SportsPlex in Wilkes-Barre during the snowstorm recovery effort. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031717CoalStSnow1-1-1-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>A crew member from Popple Construction dumps snow in the parking lot of the Toyota SportsPlex in Wilkes-Barre during the snowstorm recovery effort. </caption0><photoCredit0>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031517Snow6-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Wilkes University students help a car out of the snow on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre during the storm. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031517Snow6-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Wilkes University students help a car out of the snow on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre during the storm. </caption1><photoCredit1>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031617Snow7ad-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A sign hangs on Mattern&#8217;s on Market Street, stating the business was closed due to the snowstorm. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031617Snow7ad-1.jpg</photo2><caption2>A sign hangs on Mattern&#8217;s on Market Street, stating the business was closed due to the snowstorm. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031817snowremoval2-cmyk-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Newport Township workers are shown removing snow from Main Street in Glen Lyon. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031817snowremoval2-cmyk-1.jpg</photo3><caption3>Newport Township workers are shown removing snow from Main Street in Glen Lyon. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_Snow-1-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Reporter Melanie Mizenko sent in this photo from outside her residence on Green Street in Ashley. Melanie Mizenko | Times Leader</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo4>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_Snow-1-1.jpg</photo4><caption4>Reporter Melanie Mizenko sent in this photo from outside her residence on Green Street in Ashley. Melanie Mizenko | Times Leader</caption4><photoCredit4>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit4></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031517Snow10-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The snowstorm that hit the area on March 14-15 left cars buried, as seen here on South River Street in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo5>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_TTL031517Snow10-1.jpg</photo5><caption5>The snowstorm that hit the area on March 14-15 left cars buried, as seen here on South River Street in Wilkes-Barre. </caption5><photoCredit5>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit5></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta></subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Bill O&#8217;Boyle</p><p>boboyle@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>WHAT&#8217;S WRONG WITH OUR ROADS/SERIES SCHEDULE</strong></p><p>We drive on them, bicycle on them, walk on them. But it isn&#8217;t always easy. In a three-part series, the Times Leader looks at three problem areas in our system of roads and highways.</p><p>&#8226; <strong>Monday</strong>: potholes</p><p>&#8226; <strong>TODAY</strong>: snow</p><p>&#8226; <strong>Wednesday</strong>: bridges</p><p>On the web: timesleader.com/tag/PAroads</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Bill O&#8217;Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

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Cleanup kudos? Yes and no. Mix of positive, negative comments in Stella aftermath