The "Blizzard of 2011" hit Northwest Indiana with a fierceness to be reckoned with and dumped anywhere from 14 to 18 inches of snow in the area. As cities and towns dug out Wednesday into Thursday, the City of Portage was one of those communities that had to deal with the aftermath.
I was traveling on the main roads of Portage to meet Mayor Olga Velazquez at the City of Portage Street Department on Thursday afternoon, and I couldn't help but notice that US 6 was so covered in snow that most of the time the 4-lane highway turned into two lanes. And, it's not as if the other lane was even remotely available for passing. The height of the snow in the adjacent lane was as high as the surrounding areas. When I arrived to the Street Dept., calls from disgruntled and angry Portage citizens were ringing off the hook for the plows to come to their respective residential street or cul-de-sac. One of the phone answerers, Chuck Haskell, described the situation in plain terms.
"People just expect it to be done at a flick of a thumb. When we get 2-3 inches of snow, it takes anywhere from 24-30 hours to clear [the roads] off completely. When you're talking 15, 16, 17 inches of snow though....we are doing the best we can," explained Haskell.
"This department truly exemplifies the employees that are willing to work for our city and our Portage," said Mayor Velazquez. "They have been away from their families some for 14, 16 hours at a time...they have gone above 
and beyond." Velazquez explained that the plows were able to make their first pass through residential streets at 3 pm on Wednesday and then returning to the main passageways (US 6, Willowcreek, etc.) to finish tidying up there in which I explained above, US 6 was still down to one lane.
When I heard these facts and contrasted them to the ranting and raving that was happening on the other side of these phone calls, I really wanted to say to those grumpy people, "Take a chill pill!" Portages' very own mayor, God bless her soul, was putting shifts in at the Street Dept. to answer calls to enable the other employees to get some rest while the Dept. stayed open around the clock. The main phone answerer, Donielle Maxin, almost literally did not take a breath the entire time I was there, because she was answering call after call.
"We understand that people are frustrated and need to get to work and need to get to appointments, and I empathize and understand, and all I can say is that we do our best, and the men and women of the Street Dept. have been working around the clock," said Mayor Velazquez.
Before I left, I got a chance to talk to Brandon Austin, one of the guys that were working the plows. He was describing the hours that they worked (8 or 16-hour shifts around the clock until the roads were all cleared) and the conditions they were working under (brutal) and yet his attitude was so positive!
"I'm pretty used to it, it's not too bad. It's not my first big storm," said Austin.
So please, next time you have something negative to say or complain about in regards to Portage and its Street Dept., take it to the "negative police". And since that doesn't exist, take some of that frustration and put it to work -- shoveling. Thank you.