ALLENTOWN, Pa. – For William Kuntzman, communication is everything.
“Today, we’re out here removing snow for the city of Allentown on Seventh Street,” said Kuntzman.
Kuntzman works for Allentown’s streets department, who have been working around the clock in shifts since all this snow fell.
“It takes a lot of guys to do this, a lot of equipment to do this, and a lot of hours to do this,” said Kuntzman.
And this isn’t the only crew.
“We have another crew doing snow removal around the school districts and stuff. And then we also have still crews going out through the tighter alleyways and stuff like that,” said Kuntzman.
Snow removal is the only work being done at Luis A Ramos Elementary School.
Learning for the Allentown School District has gone virtual this week.
“The challenge still is transportation, meaning school busses and the access that they have on the streets, as well as our school district, is predominantly walkers, so walking safely to school is also problematic,” said Robert Whartenby, ASD Chief Operations Officer.
Just drive down the streets and you’ll see how problematic.
Snow is walling in cars, the frozen bulk shrinking two lanes down to one.
The problem is there’s just no where for the snow to go until it’s carted off by the streets department, or melted by the sun.
Until then Kuntzman says city crews will keep plugging away.
“If everybody could just bear with us. Give us time to do what we have to do. We’re out here working 24 hours around the clock. We’ll get to your street and we’ll get everything cleaned up,” said Kuntzman.
The Allentown School District says it hopes to have kids back in their classrooms on Monday.
City work crews say they have no idea how long it will take to rid the streets of the snow, but they will keep working.