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The snow continues in Seattle (another 1-5 inches expected from last night through today, with more to come), and the city’s troubles in coping aren’t getting any better.

A run down of how it’s impacting us:

• Mail, which usually falls under the motto of “Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet“, has come to a halt by us – we’ve received mail once in the past 5 days, and we’re not expecting it to really resume soon. Turns out, we’re not the only ones having problems here – according to the Seattle Times, about a tenth of the city didn’t get mail on Monday (225,000 delivery points out of 2.5 million), and UPS and FedEx aren’t faring much better.
• The city and county are asking people to stay off of the roads, and use mass transit – but then again, the bus system is not really working. They claim half service, but if you look at the cancellation list, many, many routes are canceled – including all of the routes that go up to the top of Queen Anne (the 2,3,4, and 13). The last few days, we’ve had to hike down to the bottom of the extremely steep and icy hill (on a good day, this take 10-15 minutes – it took us 45), and wait for a different route.
  • In fact, on the way down last evening to meet Joelle, so we could walk up again, I had to stop and call 911 to help a gentleman who had fallen and could no longer get up (it was a hip/leg problem). The fire department responded immediately (see dispatch number F080118221 at the Real-Time 911), but there was at least a half-hour wait for an ambulance at the point I left the man in the capable hands of the medics. The fact that all of the roads around us were closed due to the ice likely didn’t help.
• Road Closures are still all around, including Queen Anne Ave (the Counterbalance), as I’ve mentioned, but also quite a few of the streets through downtown. Partially, this is due to Seattle’s environmental policy - no salting, and rubber plows only – which is now starting to cause quite a debate. The official city policy is to “pack the snow down, and wait for it to melt” – usually, this works, but then again, usually there’s not a week-plus of snowfall.
• Garbage, Recycling and Food/Yard Waste is on hold indefinitely, until the roads become clear. Thankfully, we don’t have too much of any of these, so it’s not a huge deal – though our yard waste bin is now full after I learned to use a saw in breaking apart the branch that fell off our tree the other night. As one of the local newsman said this morning, “thankfully, it’s cold out there – so the garbage is being refrigerated, and won’t smell so bad”
  • The neighborhood kids have been sledding non-stop, which is cool to watch, but one of them took our garbage can’s lid to use as a sled (we leave our garbage/etc… in the alley year-round). Hopefully, the city has replacements when it does pick up again.

On the positive side, working from home has been really easy, and the dogs sure love the snow :)