Cindy Sherman didn’t want to take her chances on city plows making their way to her block, a tidy cul-de-sac dotted with colonial houses on the D.C. side of Chevy Chase. So after a monster storm left the Washington region encased in ice-crusted snow, she sent an email to her neighbors: would anyone want to go in on hiring a private snowplow?
The price she was initially quoted — $1,500 for the stretch of road bounded by 44 houses — struck her as steep. But as a 28-year resident, Sherman knew from experience that the little street would be low on the city’s list of priorities. And she wanted to see her grandchildren. Maybe her neighbors, who had doctor’s appointments and work to get to, would want to chip in.
Sure enough, 10 responses hit Sherman’s inbox within about a half hour. Others followed, bringing the price to a more reasonable level. It wasn’t long before a snowplow was rumbling down the street, clearing the layer of snow and ice until, by Monday night, the pavement shone through again. Later, when an advisory neighborhood commissioner noted in an update to residents that Stuyvesant Place NW had amazingly been plowed even as other streets were thick with snow, Sherman felt compelled to set the record straight.
“I thought, ‘I am not letting the city take credit for this one,’” she said in an interview. “I emailed her back and said, ‘I’m going to solve your mystery for you. We hired a private company to do it.’”
As mounds of stubborn snow remained on some residential streets, across national park land and piled on sidewalks that businesses or homeowners had neglected to clear, and around some Metro stops, many Washingtonians found their own ways of digging out, whether through charity, camaraderie or commerce.
Across the region, scenes played out of people taking their shovels to carve out pathways, banding together to push out stuck cars, sharing tips on the right equipment for the “snowcrete” — pickaxes, pitchforks, metal shovels and hammers, reported commenters on one Reddit thread — and helping each other get around. Others took the opportunity to make some hard-earned cash, toiling away at removing the snow for a price.
Many shared Sherman’s frustration with local governments, believing they should have taken care of the snow more quickly or effectively. That some major school districts remained shuttered all week left many parents reeling. “We know this objectively, empirically, from covid: It’s bad when kids aren’t in school,” said education researcher Liz Cohen, who lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and whose son attends a Montgomery County high school.
Officials in D.C. and its surrounding suburbs have stressed the extraordinary nature of the Jan. 25 storm, which began with 4 to 7 inches of snow and was followed by up to 4 inches of sleet. The amount of sleet — snow that falls, melts and refreezes into ice pellets before hitting the ground — was more than had hit the region in at least three decades, according to the Capital Weather Gang. Brutally frigid temperatures in the days since has kept things from melting.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) noted on Friday that the city’s government and schoolshad reopened and Metro was running, while also saying she understood people were frustrated about not being able to walk to bus stops or get to their cars in alleys. Sidewalks are the responsibility of homeownersand businesses, while streets are up to the city to handle.
“Listen, I know everybody is frustrated. … They just want to go back to normal,” she said during a news conference. “We want that too, but we have a lot of snow and ice to move and we’re moving that snow and ice. I think that we have prioritized the right things, we pivoted and we’ve added resources to accommodate this.”
The mayor has also touted a city program called “Snow Team Heroes,” through which more than 600 people have volunteered to clean off walkways for seniors and the disabled.
But Ashley Ruff, an advisory neighborhood commissioner representing the Benning, Dupont Hill and part of the Hill East neighborhoods in Southeast, said she was bombarded with messages from people who said they had requested help and not received it. She forwarded their messages to city officials, but when no one had come by Thursday, she decided to take things into her own hands: She went outside with a shovel and started digging.
“I figure being a public servant, what am I doing? Let me go outside to help,” she said.
Nathan Harrington, who runs the park cleanup nonprofit Ward 8 Woods and spent most of the week working to chip away iced-over sidewalks and paths to people’s doors, described the scale of the mobilization as “not equal to the task at all.” Harrington and his crew cleared the walkways of about 60 homes assigned to them by the city, he said, but thousands remained untouched.
One resident told him her husband had already missed two medical appointments while trapped by the frozen muck. Another brought them hot chocolate, a gesture of thanks for the backbreaking work that had left the team exhausted.
“It is satisfying,” Harrington said. “But there’s also some frustration, knowing what we’re doing is kind of a drop in the bucket.”
The conditions created dangerous situations for some. Maggie Snow and her sister spent a long Monday at the emergency room with their mother, who has multiple sclerosis. The trio was nearly home when they rode up the Metro elevator at the Cleveland Park station and headed into the icy night. Then, Snow’s mother’s 200-pound electrical wheelchair became stuck on a block of ice outside the elevator.
The sisters couldn’t pry her loose, and were scared she could tip over as they attempted to jostle her free. Two Metro police officers tried to help, but no luck. Finally two men came by and asked, in Spanish, if they needed help, then heaved the chair up and over the frozen hump so they could get to the street. The three women stayed in the street the rest of the way home, believing it was safer than getting stuck again in the cold.
That people rallied together to help was meaningful, Snow said. Yet it didn’t make up for the frustration.
“I will say, the sense of community I feel in Cleveland Park, and the warm, fuzzy feelings I have about that, were really not top of mind that night,” she said. “It’s just complete frustration with WMATA and the city for putting me in that situation.”
“This is arguably the heaviest and hardest snow I’ve ever felt in my life, and I grew up in Canada,” Clarke said at a Metro meeting. “It was just very, very difficult to maneuver and clear; still is.”
Some locals decided it was worth paying to get rid of the nearly impenetrable layers of snow and ice. Leonel Marroquin, a DMV-based contractor, said he and five of his workers toiled for most of the week from around 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. clearing the entrances and driveways of houses. By Thursday they were spending three hours per job cutting through up to 5 inches of ice with metal shovels.
Marroquin finally took a rest day on Friday despite his phone blowing up with continued requests for help. The 52-year-old said he had “pain all over my body today.” But, with business slow otherwise during the colder months, he was grateful for the work. He said he charged up to $300 a house.
“First and foremost, we helped many people,” said Marroquin, who was planning to cook a hearty beef soup that night and get back outside Saturday. “And we will continue to do so.”
Lee Stillwell, who plowed Sherman’s street estimated he had received about 100 calls. He won’t be able to get to all of them, he said, even as he’s spent full days in his truck, heated seats and massager switched on. He slept two to three hours a night until Thursday, when he got six.
The snow-ice combo is so impervious that it has been “tearing up equipment left and right,” said Stillwell. He’s been in this line of work for more than 40 years, since he got his driver’s license, and sees this storm as one that will “definitely go down in the books.” Given that, he thinks people should be a little more patient about snow-removal efforts.
“Until you do it, I don’t think you understand how hard it is,” he said. “I’ve been in my truck since Saturday, basically.”
Stillwell was bracing for more long days. Then he was going to get out of the cold for a trip to Las Vegas. In his truck Friday, he checked the weather there. It might even be warm enough to get in the pool, he said, sitting there surrounded by snow.
Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
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