After a week that saw nearly two feet of snow dropped, the village of Oak Park was still working on clearing streets Thursday, Feb. 5.
“We had a lot of winds, dropping temps, a whole lot of mess,” said John Wielebnicki, Oak Park’s public works director. “We’re asking residents to be patient … It was a pretty big snow storm. It really was.”
Wielebnicki said Feb. 2 that his crews had been gearing up for the storm since Saturday evening and worked non-stop through Monday evening.
Oak Park’s snow parking ban is still in effect until officials deem conditions are safe, meaning parking is prohibited on main streets and restricted to one side on all other streets in the village.
The National Weather Service said the winter storm that hit the Chicago area Feb. 1 was the fifth-largest to ever hit the area. Across Chicagoland, reports of over 19 inches of snow on the ground created a congested commute Monday morning.
“We’ve had as much snow in the last four days as we had in the 2011 blizzard,” Wielebnicki said.
On Monday evening, Wielebnicki said that Oak Park’s main streets were clear but that he was moving his department’s heavy equipment to clear alleys within the village. Garbage pickup was pushed back a day, similar to how it’s normally handled during holidays.
The village also temporarily closed parking lots to clear snow. It’s a more efficient way of clearing snow from parking lots, Wielebnicki said, because plows don’t have to play musical chairs and wait for spaces to become free for plowing.
“We were hectic clearing the alleys on Monday and when we thought we had a good majority of those cleared, the other snowfall made a mess again,” Wielebnicki said Thursday. “So we needed to get people back out clearing the streets because they were all white again.”
Snow removed from the parking lots is being taken to a Cook County Forest Preserve facility in Maywood, thanks to an agreement between the village and the county.
More information on the emergency plan can be found at oak-park.us or by calling 708.358.7669 (SNOW).
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.