Philadelphia mayor thanks residents for pitching in before and after Irene

The mayor of Philadelphia says there are plenty of thank-you’s to go around for surviving the storm. 

Mayor Michael Nutter says it was a total team effort to survive Hurricane Irene, including volunteers working with city employees.

“We talked about the Philadelphia water department taking proactive action to clean inlets, and we asked citizens if at all possible without any danger to themselves to help us with inlet cleaning,” said Nutter. “The report is that there were 400 inlets cleaned prior to the storm and that is a great part of why we didn’t have as much flooding as we could have possibly had.”

Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison says people actually followed the advice of city officials.

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“We thank the public for listening to the things that we are saying, you took action on the things we asked you do it makes our job a lot easier,” said Gillison. “Some might be saying we overprepared, in public safety there is no such thing.”

Philadelphia officials are still counting up how much the storm cost the city.

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