Front Street in Greenport was closed to traffic this morning as crews continued a massive cleanup after a storm that left streets with piles of snow up to six feet high.
Cleanup, said Greenport Village Deputy Mayor George Hubbard, is going “pretty well. Everyone got their cars off the road and our guys are downtown now, scooping up the snow along sidewalks.” Drifts, he said, topped six feet in spots. “We’ve got to keep the business community up and running,” he said.
Once the snow is collected, it’s deposited on Moore’s Lane. Village crews have been hard at work, with one outside contractor brought in with a large dumpster ” to make it go more quickly,” Hubbard said, adding that some additional help has been hired to help shovel.
Hubbard said village crews have made good progress. ‘They’re right on it,” he said. “The highway worked all night; all streets are passable. The guys did a great job throughout the storm, and now they’re continuing to clean up so people can get to the supermarket, the drugstore.”
The Village of Greenport reported no power outages during the storm, Hubbard said, but said, just in case, employees were on standby at the power plant.
Hubbard said village officials wanted to thank the public for listening to announcments and removing their vehicles from the street, to facilitate plowing. “Everyone did a great job,” he said.
Trustee Mary Bess Phillips said the clock is ticking for the cleanup. “Given the temperature drop tonight, we all need to be working toward clearing as much as possible today.”
Marc LaMaina, owner of Lucharitos, said cleanup was “pretty easy”. The snow, he said, was light. And, he added, “The village road crew did great.” LaMaina said he and two men shoveled the snow outside while it was still light and got snow off the roof at the eatery. “It’s a flat roof so we don’t want the roof getting stressed,” he said. But in the end, cleanup, he said, was a breeze. “There wasn’t much to it, really.”
Meanwhile, it’s back to business, with a village board meeting to be held tonight at 6 p.m. at the Third Street Firehouse.
SoutholdLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl.
