February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Harry Keaney
Someone’s always got to clean up, even on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick’s Day.
Sanitation workers may not always get the recognition they deserve, but along the parade route this Friday, a certain group can be assured of cheers of appreciation from the throngs of sidewalk spectators pressed behind the police barriers.
Armed with shovels and brooms, the sanitation workers will follow the mounted police and other units on horseback for the entire parade route, performing a chore that will make the going all the more pleasant for those marching behind.
"Horse detail," it’s called in the parlance of the sanitation department.
Although there may be some who resent the clean-up job, there are others with the right attitude for the day, waving their brushes and shovels in acknowledgment of the crowds.
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"Sometimes we get volunteers for the job," said John Francis, the sanitation department’s assistant borough superintendent, who has responsibility for special events, prime among them being parades such as St. Patrick’s and the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
"Some of the sanitation workers like the hoopla and the cheers," Francis said. "It’s a humble, thankless job and they deserve to get recognition for it."
It’s a sentiment shared by Francis’s boss, Al Rahner, who has been the Department of Sanitation’s Manhattan borough commissioner since last October.
"In general, I think sanitation doesn’t get the recognition it deserves," Rahner said.
Preparation
The sanitation department’s preparation for the parade begins days before St. Patrick’s Day. "One of the first things we do, two or three days before, is check the route and the feeder blocks for construction sites, large roll-on, roll-off containers and such," Francis explained.
At about midnight this Thursday, the day before the parade, two mechanical brooms and a collections truck will make another sweep of the area, concentration on the feeder blocks, the side streets from about 44th Street to 48th Street where parade participants will congregate before marching onto Fifth Avenue on Friday morning. "Our motorized litter patrol trucks take everything that can be picked up," Francis said.
A pre-cleaning shift, starting at 6 a.m. on Friday, with three mechanical brooms and six collection trucks, will also go over the area again to ensure it has remained clean for the start of the parade.
On Friday morning, 47 sanitation workers, on what is known as "the event shift," will be divided into three sectors. They will follow the parade participants as they move out from the feeder blocks, east and west of Fifth Avenue. After the feeder blocks are cleared, the workers will join together, emerging onto Fifth Avenue and continuing up toward the dispersal areas at 86th Street.
The clean-up will be completed by the 4 p.m.-to-midnight post-cleaning shift.
The sanitation department’s entire St. Patrick’s Day operation involves a total of just about 75 sanitation workers and about 12 officers.
Last year, the job cost $31,000.
"We do not do the job with a large number of people," Rahner said. "We have pre-cleaning, cleaning up during the parade and after clean-up, but there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes."
Francis, whose grandmother, Rosanne Doyle, was born in Virginia, Co. Cavan, in 1871 and died when he was 5, will be out early on the morning of St. Patrick’s Day checking the parade route. He will then attend Mass and breakfast organized by the Sanitation Department’s Emerald Society in Holy Cross Church on 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. He and Rahner will also march in the parade as part of the Emerald Society’s contingent.
For Francis, and the many others of New York’s Strongest, as the Department of Sanitation workers are known, it’s a day when work and heritage march in lockstep. Even Borough Commissioner Rahner, who’s of German and Italian descent, proudly says he, too, has some Irish.