Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Northeast starts to dig out

By Times Staff
Published January 25, 2005

DENNIS, Mass. - Snowdrifts 6 feet high kept some Massachusetts residents trapped in their homes Monday as commuters across the Northeast limped back to work on icy roads and packed trains.

In a region hit by a paralyzing weekend blizzard, Massachusetts saw the most snow: a whopping 38 inches in cities north and south of Boston. As much as 21 inches of snow blanketed parts of New Jersey, where the morning commute was crippled by delays of more than an hour.

"We are not happy people," said Colleen Neiman, who was inching her way toward an internship in Manhattan. "All the trains are messed up. My train was an hour late. They're not going to be too happy with me at work."

Cities south of Boston got heavy, wet snow that that turned to ice in single-digit overnight weather, creating problems on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, where scattered power outages persisted and roads remained unplowed.

Many residents in the area were stuck at home because towns had abandoned plowing efforts while wind piled the heavy snow into gigantic drifts. People in the coastal town of Scituate south of Boston couldn't get into their homes because of shore flooding that turned to ice.

Bruce MacNayr, 46, was trapped in his home in South Dennis for 24 hours before plows reached him Monday afternoon.

"It's the most snow I've ever seen in my life," MacNayr said. "I've seen a couple of blizzards in my lifetime, but this is the worst."

A state of emergency remained in effect for Massachusetts, but Gov. Mitt Romney ordered state employees to return to work today after giving nonessential personnel the day off on Monday. Most Rhode Island government workers also got the day off.

After a weekend in which flights were grounded from New England to Chicago, Boston's Logan International Airport reopened Monday after a 30-hour storm shutdown. But then it was hit by an hourlong power outage that shut elevators and escalators.

School closings were reported Monday from Virginia to Maine.

At Tampa International Airport, flight schedules were returning to near-normal Monday.

"We probably wound up (Sunday) with 60 cancellations, a huge impact, but things are much better today," said airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan. "Today we had five or fewer cancellations and maybe a dozen delays. We're having a much easier day."

[Last modified January 25, 2005, 01:21:08]