South Side Block Plowed At Last
UPDATED 02/07/11 11 a.m.
CHICAGO (WBBM/CBS) -- The city is finally getting back to normal, but it took until Monday morning for one block in the city to get plowed.
As CBS 2's Susanna Song reports, 9100 block of South Dauphin Avenue in the South Side's Burnside neighborhood, near the Chesterfield/91st Street Metra Electric Line station. It had been untouched by city snow plows since the blizzard on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.
WBBM Newsradio 780 began reporting that this morning, and nearly an hour and a half later, a front-end loader arrived on the block and it drivable.
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Before that, residents had cleared some of the snow, which came up as high as the fire hydrants on the parkway. Otherwise, the block hadn't been touched.
"I thought that this was ridiculous, and I saw neighbors on adjacent streets serviced, and not ours," said one resident of the block, Jeanine Collins.
Collins lives on the block, and earlier, she said she resorted to calling Newsradio 780 after calling 311 constantly. She also e-mailed CBS 2 about her frustration.
"We literally flagged down a plower yesterday on 91st Street; asked him to please come around, and we followed him to 92nd Street," Collins said, "and he came, and stopped right there, looked at it, and he just made a right, and he never came back."
CBS 2 and WBBM 780 also both noticed someone from Streets and Sanitation drive by.
Initially, when asked if 91st and Dauphin was going to be plowed, the Streets and San supervisor said he didn't know.
It all made for mounting frustration until plows finally came through.
"To be honest with you, I haven't parked my car over here. I was at another residence, and I called a neighbor to sey, 'Hey, has the street been plowed?' and she said, 'No,' so I didn't bring my car over here," Collins said.
Streets and Sanitation says the number of 311 service calls has decreased significantly, from nearly 7,000 last Wednesday to about 600 Sunday afternoon. Streets and San crews are now working on side streets.
