Snow Hampering Travel For Handicapped

PHILADELPHIA - One week after a second snowstorm slammed our area, the cleanup continues.

Getting around the city on foot is getting a little easier for some. But it's still a challenge for the handicapped, and they say they're not getting the help they need.

Typical of what you'll find around the city are intersections with sidewalk corners covered in piles of snow, which makes it tough for pedestrians and even tougher if you're handicapped, Fox 29's Claudia Gomez reported

"We were trying to cross the walkway, and there's snow on the curb cut," said one woman who was trying to push a wheelchair across the street.

The curb cut is where the pavement meets the road to allow passage for wheelchairs. But with a pile of snow covering the cut, this man needed a couple of good Samaritans to make it onto the sidewalk.

It's an all-too-common obstacle.

"Very common, every day, all the time because, if you don't need a curb cut, they consider it like a second thought, if at all," said Shawn Tucker, who has been disabled since childhood."

Asked if he wheels himself out into traffic to try to get around the snow banks," Zachary Lewis, who has been disabled since 2001, answered, "There's no other way. We'll try to get into the street and go with the cars to another safer location."

Philadelphia's streets department said it's up to the property owner to clear the sidewalks and curb cuts.

One intersection sits outside a SEPTA and Patco entrance, half a block from an agency that employs hundreds of disabled people. But when the agency complained to SEPTA, a lawyer for SEPTA sent a letter back, calling it an "unwarranted complaint" that "exaggerates" the problem. What's more, he called the disabled "self-centered."

SEPTA has since apologized.

"They have to sit in chairs, I think, for a day – or use crutches, a walker, whatever it takes – and get to a place and there's like steps going down and then wonder what would you do?" Tucker said.

Thanks to a phone call from Fox 29, the city is sending crews out to that intersection to clear and salt the curb cut, which is good news for the 200 disabled people who work on that block.

The big problems right now in the suburbs right now are parking lots. A viewer in New Castle, Del., sent Fox 29 photos showing that when plows cleared shopping center parking lots on Route 9, they dumped the snow onto the handicapped spots.

When she complained, the manager of a supermarket there told her it's not his problem.

For a Mount Airy 10-year old with spina bifida, snow banks are keeping his paratransit ride from picking him up for school.

Rasheed Johnston's mother, Stacy, said she has called 311 five times and has been told her request is in, but nothing has been done.

Johnston said he misses his friends and teachers and wishes he could get back to school.

The alley behind their house has not been plowed, so paratransit can't get back there either. The city is not responsible for plowing alleys or sidewalks.