Thursday, 4:30 PM
After the snowfall comes the slippery slopes
By Brian R. Ballou and April Simpson, Globe Staff
It may have been snow or sleet when it came out of the sky, but by Thursday morning it was ice, a gleaming, rock-hard casing on sidewalks and walkways that made shoveling a joke and walking a treacherous adventure worthy of Edmund Hillary.
Across the city, crowds of work-bound pedestrians negotiated ice and ridges of frozen slush as though they were on polar expeditions instead of city sidewalks. They reeled and slipped and kicked at the ice for tentative footing. Many didn’t always achieve it.
"I almost wiped out a couple of times already," said 26-year-old Jaeger Agraz, making her way up a Beacon Hill street after disastrously trying to walk on the encrusted sidewalk. "The streets are the way to go."
City code enforcement police Thursday cited several businesses for failing to clear their sidewalks. Friday, 18 code enforcement police officers are to canvass the city, targeting residents who haven’t cleared their walks.