Illinois state government officials promised winter road services would not be affected by the state’s tight budget situation, stating that “snow and ice removal isn’t a service that will be affected” and that the state is “prepared for any wicked weather Mother Nature throws our way.”Ī 2009 Freedom of Information Act request made by the Illinois Policy Institute found that the State of Illinois spent $52,184,919.52 on salt and abrasives for road use. Chicago’s Street and Sanitation Department’s 2009 personnel budget for snow removal is $6 million. For the 2009-2010 winter season, Mayor Richard Daley outlined plans to avoid previous mistakes and has committed to keeping the roads safe and clear. In the winter of 2008-2009, Chicago cut overtime services, leaving side roads iced over for days. If government fails to meet expectations, it does not go unnoticed. People expect clear roads during wintertime – and they want the roads cleared in a timely fashion. Bilandic’s opponent, Jane Byrne, seized on the city’s stumble as the race was coming to end, airing commercials with lines like “listen, only the good Lord can stop the snow and its not the fact that it snowed that’s the problem here, but it was just the sort of competence in dealing with it and a certain dishonesty that came with that.”īyrne won the mayoral race, in large part due to the city’s inability to provide a core government service. Many believe Chicago’s failure to clear the roads of snow had a major affect on the fall of then-Mayor Michael Bilandic’s in the mayoral election held shortly after the storm. An estimated 300 million tons of snow closed schools for at least a week, immobilized the city’s elevated rail system for days, impeded firemen from responding to burning buildings and forced hospitals to import 1,000 pints of blood from Los Angeles. Drifts, many of them 12 feet high, blocked more than 1,400 of the city’s streets. The snow closed O’Hare International Airport for a record 42 hours. The city government failed to clear the roads of snow, which virtually shut down the metropolis for a week. In January 1979, a severe winter storm blasted Chicago.
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