Fucking slobs
Andrew Harnik/Examiner Soon after some 1.5 million visitors found their way off the National Mall and away from President Obama?s inaugural parade route Tuesday, hundreds of city and federal employees fanned out to collect the oceans of trash they left behind.
The D.C. Department of Public Works and the National Park Service picked up more than 90 tons of garbage in less than 12 hours following the inaugural festivities, said Nancee Lyons, DPW spokeswoman. On Wednesday there were still two garbage containers with capacities of 20 to 30 tons that had yet to be weighed, putting the potential total mess at roughly 260,000 pounds.
More than 100 city employees worked from 6 p.m. Tuesday to 5:30 a.m. Wednesday to clear much of what was left behind ? piles of newspaper, plastic bottles and food wrappers. The worst areas for trash, Lyons said, were K Street NW, Union Station and the Metro area off of Independence Avenue.
?They don?t see what it looks like after they leave,? Lyons said of the spectators. ?All that mess that was left behind, the next morning it?s clean. You don?t realize the work that goes into that.?
National Park Service crews were battling the garbage by hand Wednesday morning, using rakes to clear trash-clogged gutters and hand-held trash grabbers to pick up what remained. The park service had more than 300 maintenance workers and volunteers on the job all night, spokesman Bill Line said.
Also on the agenda: TV stands used by the cable news networks were broken down, and 5,500 porta-potties were emptied, though it will be days before all the johns are carted out of town.
As for the National Mall sod, Line said, it is ?not surprisingly in many locations noticeably damaged, but that?s to be expected with the number of people that were there.? It will be days before park service experts are able to fully assess damage to the grass and trees.
The record number of spectators also left behind a great deal at the checkpoints that the U.S. Secret Service would not allow past the gates. On 12th Street NW just south of Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday morning, uneaten apples and oranges littered the ground.
?If you can throw a shoe, you can throw an apple,? one agent told a young woman who was forced to sacrifice her snack before entering the parade route Tuesday.
City officials had anticipated a $47 million price tag for the event, triple what Congress allocated to the inauguration in the 2009 budget. Former President George W. Bush declared an emergency in the District for the inaugural festivities, opening the door for federal funds to flow for ?for certain emergency protective measures.? D.C. officials hadn?t come up with a final count as of Wednesday.
?The city without a vote delivered for the nation,? D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said Wednesday in a statement. ?Everywhere I went people complimented the city, and I intend to see to it that the District gets reimbursed for every cent it spent.?
Maryland expected to spend about $12 million and Virginia more than $16 million for the inaugural if Federal Emergency Management Agency or other federal funds didn?t come through. Neither state had heard from the feds as of Wednesday.
D.C. officials took the controlled chaos in stride ? of course, they were all safely tucked away in City Hall at 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue. When they needed to go out, say, to the Capitol grounds, they were escorted by police.
?Unprecedented,? said Council Chairman Vincent Gray. ?That?s all I can say. Just monumental.?
Besides the large numbers of transit passengers and pedestrians, D.C.?s neighboring counties suffered little in terms of spillover effect from the inaugural festivities, officials said.
?It was really smooth,? said Diana Sun, Arlington County spokeswoman. ?I don?t think we could have asked for smoother from our end.?
