…if the world knew just how often this tune ran through its brain:

The special commission on the Dec 13 storm just released its report:

The report makes specific recommendations for preventing a similar catastrophe. Among them are canceling school whenever at least 4 inches of snow are forecast; identifying buildings where buses can bring students in emergencies; providing legal immunity for Good Samaritans who volunteer assistance in an emergency; streamlining the process for declaring a state of emergency; and increasing fines for residents who fail to clear sidewalks.

The R.I. state seal consists of two key design elements: an anchor, that heavy thing you throw overboard in a last desperate attempt to stabilize a foundering ship; and the word ‘Hope’, as in “I hope there’s someone at the helm who knows what the hell he’s doing before we run this thing onto the rocks”. The cover story of yesterday’s ProJo reveals how carefully the Governor is spending taxpayer money in his administration while asking others to tighten their belts. Amanda Milkovits (complete disclosure, she’s a friend) does a masterful job of explaining just how Rhode Island’s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Robert T. Bray seems to be collecting paychecks from both the state and federal governments for a job he basically sucks at when he even bothers to show up. Remember this?

STATE RECORDS show that Bray has taken only one sick day through the end of 2007. It was Dec. 13, the day a snowstorm crippled Rhode Island and left 100 Providence schoolchildren stranded on buses for hours. The outcry over the poor response prompted Governor Carcieri, who was in Iraq at the time, to say Bray should have taken the lead in communications. Asked about his whereabouts during the storm, Bray said, “I was in an advisory role.” He did not say he had called in sick. That was revealed later by Robert J. Warren, the state EMA’s executive director, whom Carcieri and Bray fired on Dec. 18.

After the snowstorm, Carcieri said he wanted Bray to lead the state’s response to an emergency when the governor is away.

The response from the RI National Guard for various documents pursuant to the Journal’s request, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, “was slow and incomplete”. We are a nation of laws, Governor, or don’t Republicans subscribe to that quaint notion any more.

If you thought full-bladdered RI schoolchildren stuck on 95 was bad, think again. Massive snowstorms have left over 200,000 people stuck at the train station in Guangzhou, in the southern province of Guangdong.

Among the worst-hit cities is southern Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. The province is one of China’s most important manufacturing regions, with thousands of factories making everything from T-shirts to electronics staffed by millions of migrant workers from poorer inland provinces.

Hundreds of thousands of those workers, many with young children, found themselves stranded at the Guangzhou railway station after snowstorms snapped power lines to passenger trains from neighboring Hunan province, an important hub for trains on the main line between Guangzhou and Beijing.

(more…)

The already thoroughly-splattered shit passed through the fan once more last night, at a meeting of the City Council’s finance committee, where everybody was asking: Who was that lazy city employee hanging out on that slushy, muddy knoll?

You can check out the footage on Channel 6, which has it as their top story.

And, God help us — John Igliozzi’s about to get subpoena power. Understandable, given the trouble they’ve had getting a hold of the mayor’s Chief of Staff:

The council’s Finance Committee had asked Brayton and Kim Rose, the School Department’s chief communications officer, to attend last night’s meeting and testify about their actions the night of the storm. Rose attended, but Brayton did not.

The meeting was delayed as Igliozzi tried unsuccessfully to track her down. Then, Igliozzi asked that Stephanie Federico, the ranking member of the Cicilline administration at the meeting, to give the city clerk Brayton’s city cell phone number.

Federico provided the number, and Igliozzi called it on speakerphone during the meeting.

The committee room was silent as the call rang out on the speaker.

The call went to Brayton’s voice mailbox.

“Hmm. She must not be available,” Igliozzi said in a deliberate tone. “I think it’s very concerning that one of the individuals who played an integral part in that day is not responding.”

• A Projo Retrospective: The Politics of a Storm
• State Treasurer Frank Caprio gives away $30,000 of his own money to help folks whose cars were tagged or towed during the storm. WHAAAAA?????
• Bob Kerr: Teenage boys take the law into their own hands.

Today, in plowgate update:

• Fired EMA Chief Bob Warren gives his side of the story in today’s ProJo.
• Councilman Nick Narducci told Spt. Evans: “ I’d fire you.”
• The PVD Storm Review
• Outline of City’s Storm Response
• Timeline of what actually went down
• MC Bakst: “ What Cicilline doesn’t say“

When will it end?

• Providence director of the Emergency Management Agency, Leo Messier, joins state director Robert Warren on the unemployment rolls.
• Cicilline also suspended chief of operations for Providence schools, Thomas Hannah, without pay.

“More to come…” says the Projo. News, or firings?

I know that my earlier post on the fatal hit-and-run plow incident in Blackstone had a lighthearted tone. Now that there’s been another plow death, I’m not feeling so amused. A Woonsocket man was hit and killed by a snow plow while walking to work this morning. [ ProJo] In a 1pm news conference tomorrow, Cicilline will announce the results of a review of the city’s storm response, and the City Council is meeting at 6pm tonight to conduct its own review, so stay posted.

LAAAAAADY…. just move the car. Speaking of doppelgangers…. when the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency is being run by Jerry Lewis, whaddya expect? A cover story in today’s ProJo about ‘The Storm’ indicates that RIEMA director, Robert Warren, has been canned. Now, how do we fire the thousands of Rhode Island drivers who really bolloxed the whole thing up by pulling into and blocking the goddam intersections?!

Governor Carcieri announced today that Robert Warren, director of Rhode Island’s Emergency Management Agency, has been “terminated, effective immediately.”

Projo reports:

A statement late this afternoon from the governor’s office said the decision was made jointly by Carcieri and Maj. Gen. Robert Bray, to whom the EMA executive director reports. The move comes after government officials were taken to task for their response to last Thursday’s snowstorm and a short time after a meeting of the Emergency Management Advisory Council to discuss the litany of operational problems after the storm.

I would be sick of writing about this blizzard and the government’s failure to prepare for it adequately, but I like having an excuse to post this photo of Carcieri in Iraq on the internet every day.

Whatever you say about how Governor Carcieri handled the snowstorm fiasco, let the record show that he’s owned up to his mistake. He acknowledged today that his administration did “a poor job of communications” during last week’s storm. Awww, Donald, we forgive you. Just foot the bill for the damage to my car, please! I hear there’s that tobacco money…

ProJo has the scoop:

Today’s press conference marked his first public comment on last Thursday’s epic traffic jam, which choked most of the state’s major arteries, stranded children on school busses until late at night, and left motorists struggling to get home three to six hours on gridlocked roadways in the nation’s smallest state.

Carcieri, who returned from a weeklong visit to the Middle East on Saturday, acknowledged he didn’t learn of the story until it was over because he was flying from Kuwait to Afghanistan while the storm played out, and would not in any event have expected his staff to call him “for a 6- to 10-inch’’ snowstorm and what, he was told, was largely a Providence issue.

Uh oh… looks like Carcieri and Lt. Gov. Roberts kissed and made up and decided to turn the Plowgate scandal on the Providence Department of Public Works.  Cicilline wasn’t in Iraq, so what’s his alibi?

As my car is prone to taking extended vacations in the shop when it gets this cold, I walked to work this morning. Guess what? It’s a little cold out there! The sidewalks are awful, forget about the lack of plowing and all that stuff during the storm, it’s like walking on a glacier. You have to walk way out in the street, there are no cleared sidewalks anywhere. I saw schoolkids struggle to not skate into traffic, and old people have enough trouble walking when it’s warm! Some cities have sidewalk plows…just sayin’.

I moved to Providence in part BECAUSE OF the snow — mixed with the hills. I was a passionate sledder in my youth, having grown up in a particularly hilly corner of the Maryland suburbs of DC. I have great memories of snow-days past: The 9th-grade ice-storm that had school closed for a whole week, and finals postponed. The bootstrap snow-shoveling racket my best friend and I pushed on all our parents’ friends. The dried-up creek beds that we used to fancy as bobsled tracks — you’d actually go horizontal on their walls if you had enough momentum.

But for its climate, the city of seven hills doesn’t have much great sledding. Moses Brown is decent, but staid and overrun. (Though the perfect slope and length for a sled-jump.)

The ideal scenario is to sled down the sidewalks of College Hill — when the snow is plowed up against the street side, and what snow was on the sidewalk proper has been shoveled towards the property line, and the concrete’s all iced up. (You need a good look-out.) It captures some of that bobsled effect.

But you can’t wander through life longing for perfection.

So what are your sledding mainstays? I’ll understand if you don’t want to share, and risk their commercialization.

if we’d put a hard-ass like Bert in charge of plowing the snow:

1) DailyDose party: NEXT Thursday, same time and place. (Despite the claim at the top of the page. Tim — will you change that?)

2) The Young Dems have showed questionable judgment, and are still partying RIGHT THIS SECOND. Last month’s Harpers told me that liberals are better than conservatives at recognizing “no-go” situations. What gives?

3) Firehouse 13 will be hosting Millcraft TOMORROW night, 6-9pm

4) The Urban Planet party at MoJo’s will happen sometime in the future, if we survive until then.

Also, here’s your Cardi’s update. The boys must be out bobsledding again:

Cardis Furniture - So Attleboro - Showroom will Re-Open Fri @ 9Am,
Cardis Furniture - West Warwick - Showroom will Re-Open Fri @ 9am,
Cardis Furniture- Swansea - Dist. Center Normal Operation, Showroom Re-Open Fri @ 9Am