Snow-choked side streets anger residents

Some small side streets in South Philadelphia still looked Sunday as if they could have been scenes from Alaska or the Arctic. Residents complained that the city had cleared bigger streets like Broad, Chestnut and Spring Garden - but that smaller streets had been untouched.

In South Philadelphia, snow was piled a couple of feet deep on streets like Percy, Darien, Mildred, and Beulah, between 6th and 10th streets.

On Ritner, a Mercedes-Benz was mired in snow, blocking in neighbors who said they couldn't get to work.

It wasn't until about 4:15 p.m. Sunday that a city front-end loader came to shovel out snow on Porter Street near 10th. But neighbors said that was because it was clearing the way for a tow truck to haul out a burned-out car stuck in the middle of Porter. The car was burned completely - with no seats visible and the tires melted away.

Neighbors said someone had pulled a mattress out to the street and put it under the small four-door sedan to try to get some traction during the blizzard Saturday night. But the car went up in flames, torching a black Lincoln Navigator nearby. A third vehicle sustained fire damage to its rear bumper.

"I saw the flames last night ," said owner of the third car, who didn't want to give her name. "I thought I was going to have to evacuate because I didn't know if there was going to be an explosion."

But a man living on Percy Street, near Porter, (the 2400 block between Porter and Ritner) leaned out from a second-story window Sunday to complain that the street had not been touched by a city plow.

"What if there are babies and sick people who need to get to the hospital?" asked Richie DiCredico. "I'm disabled myself and if there was an emergency, we couldn't get out."

DiCredico said the block is full of both small children and elderly people. He said he has a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old at home.

DiCredico said that the Philadelphia Parking Authority wiped off snow to give him a ticket during a snowstorm last year.

"We're paying all this money on parking tickets, but we can't get the city to plow our streets," he said. "Where does the money go?"

A man who gave his name only as Frank said his car was stuck on an unplowed street, Hutchinson near 9th.

He said he lost income because he couldn't get to his job Sunday as a supervisor at a home improvement store and won't be able to go Monday, either.

"You can't even go down parts of Ritner, from 6, 7th and 8th streets," Frank said. "Ritner hasn't been plowed or salted. The whole area hasn't been plowed."

"We see all these things on the news about people having fun in the snow, but I don't think anything below Washington Avenue got touched," Frank said. "They can have trucks plowing in some sections of the city but other parts are being neglected. They need to do a better job in assigning these trucks in a larger area of the city, instead of concentrating in just one area."

Earlier Sunday, Jose Quiocson, who lives in the 2400 block of Mildred Street, near Ritner Avenue said usually the city waits two to three days before plowing small streets like Mildred. He was walking back home from shopping on Oregon Avenue.

He said he had parked his car on Oregon so he will be able to get to his job working at a dialysis center tomorrow. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to get out of Mildred Street.

Some took matters into their own hands.

In Chestnut Hill, drivers who dared to venture off pristine Germantown Avenue were likely to get stuck on treacherous side streets. Raymond Cerrona earned major street cred by towing a plow-equipped Ford F-250 out of the snow with his little Ford Ranger pickup truck. Uphill, too.

"That's how you do it," one bystander remarked. "Give that man a cigar," another said.

Many were aided by the kindness of strangers – or, in the case of the Volkswagen Jetta marooned on Evergreen Avenue, a cheery guy with a shovel named Tony Kindness.

"Normally, they do a pretty good job, but for whatever reason, not today," said Kindness, 40, who was shoveling the middle of the street to clear a path for the car. "Right now, we're just trying to get this Jetta out."