As Chicagoans put away their snowblowers and “dibs” chairs — for now — city officials can look back on the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011 and congratulate themselves: An overwhelming majority of residents think the city did a good job responding to the storm, according to a Tribune/WGN poll.
Nearly three-quarters of the Chicagoans surveyed — 73 percent — gave the city an overall passing grade for how it handled the storm.
In fact, when it came to the storm’s most conspicuous consequence — the hundreds of vehicles snowbound along Lake Shore Drive — respondents were more likely to blame the stranded drivers than the city.
A majority of those polled also said snow removal in their neighborhoods was as good as could be expected. But how well they believed the city performed varied in degree depending on where residents lived and their ethnicities. Minorities and South Side residents gave lower marks for the city’s performance, though they still approved of the effort by a wide margin.
In interviews, some of those polled said the city was at the mercy of the blizzard’s fury, and officials fared well in the face of a storm that dumped more than 20 inches of wind-whipped snow in roughly 24 hours.
“The mayor and (the Department of) Streets and Sanitation don’t have control over the weather, so they do their best,” said Wendy Kotrba, 53, of the North Park neighborhood. “They were very organized.”
Daniel Trier, 52, lives in the Dunning neighborhood on the Northwest Side and said he thought the city did “a pretty good job overall” in its cleanup, placing emphasis on clearing major arteries first.
“It’s an awful big city,” Trier said. “The main streets, they took care of them right away.”
The most memorable image of the storm is likely to be the stranded motorists on Lake Shore Drive. On the evening of the storm, hundreds of cars and several city buses became stuck after car crashes at North Side exits prompted officials to close the major road. Many of the stranded spent the night in their cars before being rescued the next morning.
But only 20 percent of respondents blamed the city for the debacle, while 29 percent blamed the drivers themselves. Even more — 40 percent — said neither the city nor drivers were at fault, suggesting that the snow itself was the culprit.
“With the snow coming down consistently like that, there was no way they could have prevented that from happening,” said Rodney Holland, 46, of South Shore.
Longtime Chicago resident Dorothy Rossa said drivers tempted fate by taking the lakefront boulevard, which she said always has problems in bad weather.
“If I’m going to blame somebody, it’s the nitwits that went on there. It’s common sense,” said Rossa, 80, of Ravenswood Manor.
But Lydia Gonzalez, 44, of Humboldt Park, criticized city officials — specifically Mayor Richard Daley — for waiting “until the last minute” to close Lake Shore Drive.
“I think [Daley] should have sent out the workers immediately when the storm was starting to be announced, and kept everybody informed not to take Lake Shore Drive, to find another route home,” Gonzalez said.
The poll surveyed 591 registered likely Chicago voters from Saturday to Tuesday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Overall, Chicagoans said they were satisfied with how the city removed snow from their neighborhoods, with 59 percent saying it was cleared as well as could be expected, compared to 38 percent saying it wasn’t up to par. North Siders believed the city did a better job clearing their neighborhood streets than did South Siders.
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African-American residents were the most critical of snow removal in their neighborhoods, with those in areas that had a majority of black residents saying snow removal was not as good as they expected.
Elvada Gaetan, 69, of Jeffery Manor, said her street wasn’t plowed until nearly a week after the storm.
“We didn’t get any help out here,” she said. “The neighbors took their shovels and shoveled the street so we could get out, and I think that’s really wrong. We pay taxes, as well.”
Deborah Morgan, 46, said her South Chicago street wasn’t plowed until Sunday. Sidewalks were such a mess that the neighborhood’s mail carrier warned residents that mail might not be delivered if they weren’t cleared.
“I had never heard the mailman say they’re not going to come through the snow,” she said.
Terrion Keys, 22, said his area of Uptown was in good shape by Thursday.
“There were a couple of one-way streets that were still blocked with snow, but other than that, the main streets were pretty clear,” he said. “We haven’t seen a storm (like this) since 1999 or 2000, and it was better this time than it was back then.”
Despite the problems, Woodlawn resident Edward Grady said he has seen worse. Grady said he was stranded for three days during the blizzard of 1967 when the CTA bus he was driving became stuck near South Torrence Avenue and East 102nd Street.
“They weren’t prepared for ’67,” said Grady, 73, who waited out last week’s storm in his apartment. “They did get prepared for this as much as they could.”