East Coast Snowstorm Tally: Dozens Dead, Impact Approaches $1 Billion

Schools remained closed Tuesday in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, as the full extent the impact from one of the worst snowstorms to hit the East Coast was coming into focus: more than $1 billion in damage, hundreds of thousands without power and dozens dead.

At least 46 people have died in the storm, according to the Weather Channel. Experts have said that the economic impact caused by the blizzard could reach as high as $850 million.

Combined with the damage to homes and property, the channel says, “it’s almost a certainty that this will be a billion-dollar storm.”

Nearly all the deaths were from vehicle accidents and heart attacks.

One woman in Maryland was finally rescued from her car after being trapped there for three days.

Air travel slowly crept back to life Monday and into Tuesday, with flights resuming at several major airports. At Newark Airport, though, more than 200 flights Tuesday were cancelled, the channel said.

Perhaps the biggest challenge left is clearing streets and sidewalks, a task which many residents say hasn’t been up to par.

In the New York City borough of Queens, many streets remained unplowed, even as school was in session and people were expected to be at work.

“If I’m living in the neighborhoods I mentioned — like the streets I saw in Sunnyside, Woodside — I’m not going to be happy this morning, I’m not going to be satisfied,’’ Mayor Bill De Blasio said.

Streets in parts of Manhattan were cleared almost immediately, with plows showing up first thing Sunday morning. In the affluent Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, De Blasio’s former New York home, the streets were cleared by 9 a.m. Sunday.

Queens, De Blasio said, got more snow than the other four boroughs. And some streets were in fact plowed, but when people went to shovel their cars, they “literally re-block their own street.”

Some Queens residents held up signs that said, “Thanks 4 Nothing! Did it Ourselves!”

Image via Marc Torrence