FATAL FALL AMID THE SNOWSTORM
UES doorman in freak tumble Blizzard dumps nearly 10 ins.
An Upper East Side doorman died in a freak accident Thursday when he tumbled through a plateglass window while shoveling his building’s slippery steps as the city was walloped by nearly 10 inches of snow.
Miguel Gonzalez, 59, of Bridgeport, Conn., was killed as the blizzard brought white-out conditions and 45-mph winds throughout the city.
The beloved doorman, who was planning to retire soon, was clearing the stairs leading from the sidewalk down to the lobby entrance of 333 E. 93rd St. off First Avenue at around 9:30 a.m. when he lost his footing
He tumbled backward down the stairs into the window, and his throat was slit as his head crashed through the glass. He also suffered deep facial cuts.
“You send someone off to have a good day at work and you get a call from the 19th Precinct and, just wow, your whole world comes down,” his stepson, Rogelio Aponte, told The Post.
Aponte, 46, was with his mom, Elena, when they got the news.
“They let her know [her] husband has passed, and she said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she was just screaming at the top of her lungs. It was just unbearable,” he recalled.
“She was screaming and yelling and couldn’t catch her breath. She was really going through it. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say.”
Aponte described his stepdad as a churchgoing grandpa who was “humble” and “very giving.” Gonzalez had two children of his own, along with three grandkids and two great-grandkids.
“He’s been a great granddaddy to all of them,” Aponte said. “I could never say anything negative.”
Gonzalez and Elena had been getting ready to celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day.
“He loved his wife very much,” Aponte said. “He was an example of life.”
At a weather briefing Thursday, Mayor de Blasio called the death “a very, very sad situation.”
“It’s another reminder to people: Be very careful when you are shoveling,” the mayor added.
Meanwhile, an 86-year-old man died after falling in a parking lot in Far Rockaway, Queens, on Thursday. Witnesses thought the unidentified man had slipped, but police said he may have suffered a heart attack.
The snowstorm brought the city to a crawl, as the National Weather Service recorded a total of 9.4 inches at Central Park.
Travelers were grounded around the country, as more than 2,200 flights scheduled to come in to or out of JFK, La Guardia, and Newark airports on Thursday were canceled.
New Yorkers were encouraged to stay off the roads, and more than 2,300 pieces of equipment were employed throughout the city to salt and plow streets.
The snowstorm could end up being the biggest of 2017.
“I don’t know how many more we’ll have in the books,” said Paul Walker, a senior AccuWeather meteorologist.
“It might be the big one for the season, but I can’t rule another one out at this point.”
New Yorkers who had to go to work battled snarled subways, wayward buses and snow-covered streets.
“My boss is an idiot, and I will tell him so when I see him,” said Adam Korn, 27, who was making the commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan at around 8 a.m.
It was standing-room only at Brian Dempsey’s American Ale House in Bayside, Queens, where patrons were crammed around the bar with their eyes glued to three flat-screen TVs, watching the weather reports.
“I hope Channel 2 doesn’t come in here. I’m supposed to be in the city,” one barfly called out, sending everyone into a fit of laughter.
At a press conference in Downtown Brooklyn, de Blasio said the city should be back to business as usual on Friday.
“We feel that the city will be largely back to normal, and we’ll be able to have school open and a pretty normal rush hour,” the mayor said.
He also defended himself for not attending a winter-weather news conference on Wednesday.
“I thought it was being well handled,” he said. “We were way ahead of it.”