East Coast Struggles To Emerge From Feet Of Snow

Residents on the East Coast struggled to return to normalcy Monday, with train, bus and airline service creaking slowly back to life after being shut down by near-record snowfalls responsible for 29 deaths, power outages still affecting thousands and widespread flooding in large swaths of a battered Eastern Seaboard.

The word of the day was “limited”: Limited travel, limited openings and the normal rhythms of life limited by sidewalks and streets that resembled slushy rivers and ponds with huge snow piles formed by plows making walking and driving treacherous.

More than 1,000 flights were canceled for a third day, school was canceled for tens of thousands of students, city halls were shut down in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, and the federal government closed in Washington, D.C.

“This was a major event,” Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia said during a Sunday news conference. “I caution everybody, this is going to take a long time to clean up this snow.”

Side streets remained impassable to vehicles in many areas as plows struggled to clear the snowfall, which totaled up to three feet that drifted much higher in parts.

Totals, according to the National Weather Service: 29.2 inches at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, a record, according to The New York Times; 22.4 inches at Philadelphia International Airport; and 28.1 inches at Newark Liberty International Airport. About two feet fell in Washington, D.C., and the West Virginia city of Glengary was buried by 42 inches.

In New York, a travel ban that left streets void of vehicles was lifted Sunday and bridges and tunnels were reopened. The Long Island Railroad, though, resumed with only sparse service and bus service was running with severe delays.

The storm dropped 26 inches of snow Central Park, making it the second-largest storm in the city’s history.

Low-lying coastal areas were hit hardest.

In New Jersey, much of Long Beach Island remained underwater along with Surf City and Beach Haven, all hit Saturday by snow that fell at a rate of 4 inches per hour. Power remained out for many residents.

“This is as bad as Sandy, flooding-wise,” J. Craig Otton, who owns a construction company in Stone Harbor, N.J., told The New York Times.

The Associated Press put the number of storm-related deaths at 29, most of them from car accidents and heart attacks suffered while shoveling snow.

In Pennsylvania, a pregnant Pottstown teen died Saturday morning after shoveling snow during the blizzard, her family tells NBC10. The baby did not survive.

And in New Jersey, a mother and her 1-year-old child died of carbon monoxide poisoning Saturday as they were sitting in a car during the blizzard, police said.

The tailpipe of the car was apparently covered in snow, according to a report in the Record, while the mother’s 4-year-old child is in very critical condition at a local hospital.