St. Paul Mayor Carter: We still need people to stay off snow plow routes

the city. We're going to continue to do that. And as we get going now at 8 30 on the Fox nine morning news. Once the snow stops falling, there's still plenty of work to be done clearing all the streets and sidewalks. And in order to do that, many cities have already declared snow emergencies that will last the next few days, and that includes many apples in St. Paul. And this morning we're joined by St.

Paul Mayor Melvin Carter to see where things stand in the capital city. Good morning, Mayor Carter. Morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me on you and I'm so excited to be here with you. I'm so excited to be here with you. I'm so excited to be here with those who have to park out on the street.

So what is your message to them this morning? It certainly has been frustrating, and you said the snow continues after the work starts after the snow stops. The work has already started. We're really pleased by last night from an operations perspective. It went about as well as it could be expected. Our drivers are on pace to finish their night plow routes by 9 AM. We had I think just almost 350 cars left. We had a lot of snow coming through the city.

We've been able to get through because people kind of did that. Obviously, as meteorologists have shared, it's going to it's still snowing and it's going to get a lot colder here and the wind is blowing snow around. So we still need people to help. We still need people staying off of the plow routes so that we can get through the city and walk us through the next 48 hours if you could. What can people living in St. Paul expect to see from the public Works Department? That's a great question because, of course, it's a great question. But it's a great question.

And so we're going to continue to continue to snow like this at the rate that it has. Frankly, one of the challenges is some of the streets that we plowed last night, folks probably woke up and looked and looks and feels like they weren't plowed. What's important in this first phase is making sure that emergency vehicles can still get through our city. We have a house fire at about 2 32 30 in the morning and our fire crews were able to get there just find cleared out. No injuries to residents or to residents. We have to make sure that we're safe and that we're safe. And as we could as the snow continues, our job is to fight it back and to continue to fight it back.

And of course, once it stops, that's only get a chance to actually clear it from our streets permanently. But this is a this is going to require all in effort from us as a city. Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, speaking of fires, it's important if you can clear out your fire hydrant to let those fire departments get through if there is a fire. That's so important. Let's talk about the fire. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about the fire hydrant? Do you feel that it seems that you're comfortable that you feel that all this planning has paid off? I definitely feel like all the planning is paid off. Double snow emergency like we're doing right now has is really unusual.

But one of the things that we really wanted to do is get ahead of it and communicate with folks ahead of it so that people could plan so that people could know in advance that you know, we're going to have two snow emergencies back to back so they can plan for where to put their own fire hydrant. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to have a little bit of a little bit of a sort of hunker down at home, and it really feels like our community has worked together in the way that we have to when we experience an extreme weather event like this. Right? This is what we have to do when we get something like this. Mayor Carter, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it this morning. Thanks for having me on our.

news, snow emergency, St. Paul, winter storm, streets