79th street BLOCKED from Cottage grove to St. Lawrence!!!

BREAKING NEWS

If you are hearing the 3 helicopters, it is due to a major fire on 79th between Cottage Grove and St. Lawrence. Streets are blocked off between them. There are SEVERAL emergency vehicles (fire trucks, ambulance and police cars). A passerby said that everyone made it out.

You can check TV news later today for more details, but if you are going down 79th, make sure you avoid that part of 79th.

Aldermen lash out over 911 response times

Well let's focus on Ald. Lyle's comments, but this issue requires more attention than what one Alderman might say about 911 response times:

"We have two different agencies that are both directly involved in providing safety for our citizens that stand up at CAPS meeting and community meetings all over the city and they point the finger at each other. It's intellectually dishonest," she said.

"Maybe people should stop lying to the citizens. They begin to understand that it's a lie — and nobody wants to wear the jacket. But somebody is getting paid to wear the jacket. It's very frustrating for us."

As for the 311 hang-ups, Lyle said, "I just thought it was some mechanism that was built into the system. You got too many calls. You don't feel like being bothered. Just disconnect the people after they wait. I don't think that's what taxpayers expect to pay for."

Tree down in the middle of King Drive

i didn't think that the storm on Friday, while some high winds, were so storng to cause a lot of destruction (our couple's bible study was canceled because of it -- which i didn't understand at the time).

But, it did indeed.

An entire tree was uprooted and fell on King Drive north of 82nd street, blocking the southbound lane. These photos were taken at noon on Saturday (today). A police vehicle was stationed at 81st, blocking that traffic. Northbound vehicles could pass (barely).


(My wife mentioned that clean up crews arrived around 1pm)

So it took at least 12 hours for anyone to notice a tree in the middle of a MAJOR road??!

Now, i understand that some roads may have even higher priority, and certainly those that cause bodily or vehicular damage come first.

But King Drive has to wait at least 12 hours to get help?!?!

Can a study be done to see which areas got first priority when it came to clean up? Was it the richer/whiter areas? Did places that have high traffic, but not as "desirable" or "influential" get put on the wait list?

The city takes photos when they repair landscaping...do they have photos of tree clean up? i would be interested to see if things were done fairly, or politically.

Also, were there any other major incidents like this in the neighborhood?