Winter is tough for the disabled

The worst fall was that time with the Ragu.

"I was on [South] 9th Street, and it was like ice skating," said Adam Perry, "so I fall and the glass casserole breaks, and there's Ragu all over me and the sidewalk, and it's like 10-below and it's all freezing quickly and ... "

Well, you get the picture. For Perry, a legally blind downtown Minneapolis resident, winter tumbles are all too common. Many businesses are remiss in doing their civic (and legal) duty by clearing the sidewalks, which is especially tough on the blind and disabled. And mail carriers. And, well, all of us this winter, at least since the Christmas storm deposited icy gunk all over the paved landscape.

"Well, welcome to our world," said Joan Willshire, executive director of the Minnesota State Council on Disabilities. "We're getting about the same amount of complaints from the disabled. This is actually affecting more non-disabled people, wiping out and breaking a limb."

And the January thaw is unlikely to help much, since a refreeze inevitably follows. In each of the past two years, March, with its thaw-freeze cycle, has been Hennepin County Medical Center's busiest month for victims of falls.

So no matter what some Pennsylvania rodent says on Feb. 2, we're almost certainly looking at more folks in wheelchairs having to use bike lanes because curbs are insurmountable, more injuries for the old, overweight and infirm, and more bus stops that are, in Perry's words, "like negotiating Mount Everest."

The problem is ... us. Property owners -- whether residential, business or government -- all too often don't get around to keeping the sidewalks clear. In the same way that drivers seem to be flummoxed by that first snowfall, we often treat icy buildup as something new and different.

And of course, neither sleet nor snow, etc., can keep our mail carriers from their appointed duties -- with an oddly familiar gait that's different from the "baby steps" that most of us take on ice.

"We do what we call the Herman Munster walk," said Pam Dinato, president of the local chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers. "You know you're on icy terrain, and so you're trying not to push off with the ball of your foot, so you do that flat-footed walk."

Still, major injuries are up since the Christmas storm. "We've had at least three breaks since Christmas," Dinato said, "and there probably have been 20 or 30 bad falls. If carriers reported every time they fall down, we'd have 1,500 a day because everyone falls probably once a day."

March of the penguins

Most communities in the Twin Cities area decree that sidewalks be cleared within 48 hours of a snowfall. Besides individual property owners and businesses, different public organizations handle matters in different ways. The Convention Center's maintenance staff keeps that area clear, while police and fire departments generally contract it out.

The Park and Recreation Board has 100-plus parking lots, 49 rec centers, 50 miles of sidewalks and 55 miles of paths to clear, said public-information director Dawn Sommers. Many of the trails are near lakes or rivers, which means using sand rather than salt, which can make treks even more treacherous.

"I don't mean to sound like a song," Sommers said, "but there's a whole lotta scrapin' going on. This has been kind of a worst-case scenario."

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Department of Public Works not only plows streets but must inspect sidewalks and deal with residents' complaints. The department's director of winter operations, Mike Kennedy, said last week that complaints have been "a little higher than usual, just because it's been constant.

"We've gotten about 2,000 complaints and ordered about 250 actual removal orders. We do try to act on them."

Not enough to suit Perry, who said he has called 311 (the number for complaints) and gotten few, if any, satisfactory results. Perhaps to compensate, he seems to have specialized in concocting Antarctic metaphors to describe the daily walks from his condo to his bus line on Nicollet Mall.

He predicted that conditions would get worse before they get better.