6 The Courier sun • january 29, 2015 for breaking news visit www.couriersun.com Queens gets about a foot after ‘historic’ snowstorm predicted BY CRISTABELLE TUMOLA ctumola@queenscourier.com @CristabelleT A storm that shut down public BUY DIRECT FROM THE MANUFACTURER FREE Measuring & Installation w/purchase of $100. with this ad. • Draperies • Vertical Blinds • Honeycomb Shades • Custom Window Shades • Mini Blinds Nobody Beats Our Prices! • Roman Shades • Balloon Shades • Swags & Jabots • Shutters • Upholstery • Radiator Covers • Table Pads UP TO 70% OFF LIST PRICE Free Interior Design Consultation $20 OFF with purchase of $200 or more *Not to be combined w/other offers. Expires 2/6/15 $50 OFF with purchase of $500 or more *Not to be combined w/other offers. Expires 2/6/15 $100 OFF with purchase of $1,000 or more *Not to be combined w/other offers. Expires 2/6/15 GOMER’S Window Treatments SINCE 1962 FREE SHOP AT HOME SERVICE SERVING QUEENS AND LONG ISLAND 1.800.522.6156 www.gomersdecorators.com JOHN J. CIAFONE, Esq. Attorney & Counselor at Law Your Partner In The Struggle For Justice ON THE LAW with John J. Ciafone Esq. Q. I bought my girlfriend a new Honda Accord. I let her put the title in her name but paid for her insurance. We broke up four weeks ago and I asked her to surrender the vehicle to me. She refuses and replaced the vehicle insurance in her name only. Should I just take the vehicle myself since I bought it? A. The tender of the vehicle from you to her can be interpreted as a gift since you never placed the title or ownership in your name. The key question as to whether you can “take” back the vehicle if you purchased the vehicle in lieu of marriage or while you might have been engaged, otherwise, it will be deemed a gift and you will lose all rights to said vehicle. Be careful, not to take the vehicle from her since she can fi le a complaint of grand larceny against you which is a felony, even though you bought the vehicle. • Personal Injury/ Accidents • Workers’ Compensation • Wills/Estates • Criminal • Medical Malpractice* • Real Estate • Commer./Corp./ Business • Matrimonial/ Divorce • Bankruptcy • Elder Law • Trial Lawyer Serving the needs of our community 24 Hours/7 Days 25-59 Steinway St., Suite 2F, Astoria, NY 11103 718-278-3900 *FREE CONSULTATION AT HOME, HOSPITAL OR WORK transit and restricted travel on roadways proved to be less impactful than expected, bringing about a foot of snow to Queens instead of the near three feet many predicted. “Put simply, we got about half as much as what a lot of the projections had been, or even under half as much,” Mayor de Blasio said at a storm briefing on Jan. 27. The storm was large and real as expected, but moved eastward, hitting Long Island a lot harder, the mayor emphasized. “Things turned out a lot better than we feared, but we were prepared,” he said, defending the city’s storm preparations, including shutting down mass transit and prohibiting nonemergency vehicles from local streets. Snow totals for the possibly “historic” blizzard were forecast as high as 30 inches for the city at times. But as of 10 a.m. on Jan. 27, the day after the storm began, totals in Queens reached about a foot at the most, according to local weather reports. After announcing a state of emergency and travel ban on all state and local roads for 13 New York counties starting at 11 p.m. on Jan. 26 for non-emergency vehicles, Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifted the ban in most of those counties, including all the five boroughs, as of 7:30 a.m. the following day. “This is not a storm to take lightly and we are taking what we believe are prudent measures,” Gov. Cuomo said before instituting the ban. The storm also prompted the MTA to shut down its entire subway, bus and commuter rail systems at 11 p.m. on Jan. 26, with Cuomo making the announcement just after 5 p.m. that evening. It was reportedly the first time the transit agency has suspended service for snow. The MTA resumed subway and bus service at 9 a.m. the next day and was running on a Sunday schedule by noon, which is about 60 percent of weekday service. The Long Island Rail Road started operating on its electrified branches around 12 p.m. with a weekend schedule. Full subway and bus weekday service was back on Wednesday and on many of its commuter rail lines. Life in the city also started to return to normal on Jan. 27 when its parks reopened after closing the previous evening because of fears over falling branches. The city’s public schools, however, were closed that day. But students had to return to class on Wednesday. Alternate side parking was suspended on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to help the Department of Sanitation clear the city’s streets. The mayor, who along with the governor faced criticism for the MTA shutdown and vehicle bans for a storm that didn’t materialize, said the preparations helped with the plowing. “There’s no question of how serious this is, how serious it was projected to be and the kind of precautions that we had to take,” he said. “The good news is, the people of this city understood how serious the threat was. They took the travel ban seriously, they got off the roads after 11 p.m., and that allowed the sanitation department to do an extraordinary job.” THE COURIER/Photo by Liam La Guerre
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