Blizzard’s Toll at 171; Scores Still Missing

The death toll from the “Blizzard of ‘93” rose to 171 Monday as rescuers from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Maritimes struggled with the aftermath of a storm of snow and ice that has been described as the worst this century.

Several dramas continued that threatened to push the number of fatalities even higher.

In the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, rescuers searched for dozens of students, teachers and parents from the Detroit area, members of a group of 117 taking part in a wilderness survival course. Late Monday, 93 had been accounted for.

In the frigid waters off Nova Scotia, 32 crew members were missing after a 530-foot freighter sank in 60-foot seas early Monday. One body had been found by nightfall.

And in Florida, rescuers continued to comb coastal waters for 16 missing mariners.

Cleanup efforts along the tornado-lashed Gulf Coast continued, while south of Miami the National Guard was ordered to help rebuild a tent city that had been ripped up by high winds early Saturday. More than 100 people evacuated from the tents were among thousands of South Floridians who had lost their homes in Hurricane Andrew last August.

Most major U.S. airports moved back toward normal operations, and in much of the Northeast, accustomed to winter blasts, the emergency appeared to be over. But many schools in Virginia and the District of Columbia remained closed, and hundreds of government workers accepted an invitation to take the day off as part of their annual leave.

In New York, 1,700 snowplows were at work, and the city put out the call for 1,000 laborers to shovel snow away from fire hydrants and bus stops at $8 an hour. Schools in New York City were open as usual.

It was in the Deep South, unaccustomed to major snowstorms at any time of year, especially a week before the official start of spring, where winter woes caused the deepest trouble.

Although the sun was out and temperatures climbed into the 40s Monday afternoon, major interstate highways remained impassable, in part because of ice and slush, and in part because of accidents, abandoned vehicles, and the simple volume of traffic.

An 80-mile backup on I-75 from just north of Atlanta to the Tennessee line was just one of many problems plaguing major arteries throughout the South. Gasoline tanker trucks were positioned along some Georgia interstates to refuel cars that had been deserted when their gas ran out.

Many north-bound motorists turned back to Atlanta when the going got rough. But turning back was not always possible. Six emergency shelters were opened Monday to take in stranded travelers, many of whom had been stuck for three nights in the Calhoun area 70 miles north of Atlanta.

Although I-65, the north-south route through Alabama, was open with one lane in each direction, jack-knifed trucks continued to cause huge delays, according to Scott Adcock, spokesman for the Alabama Emergency Management Dept.

“It’s a false sense of security for people right now because several miles may be clear, and then they’re running about 65 miles per hour and run up on a patch of ice, even black ice,” he said. “It’s still a real problem.”

Birmingham, Ala., which has no snow plows, recorded 13 inches of snow over the weekend, and the overnight low Monday fell to 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Chattanooga was pelted with two feet of snow.

Hundreds of thousands of customers still had no electricity, most of them in the South. Some utility crews dispatched from other regions to aid local power companies were caught in the massive traffic tie-ups. During the height of the storm Saturday, more than 3 million homes were blacked out in the eastern states.

In South Carolina, some 100 teen-agers and counselors who were trapped at a camp were carried to safety by National Guard helicopters.

In the Cranberry Glades wilderness area of mountainous West Virginia, five horseback riders from Ohio missing since Friday were found safe at midday Monday.

In Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, six teen-agers and their two adult leaders from a Connecticut school were found early Monday huddled along a path. Drifts there were 10 feet high.

In the mountains of Georgia, the National Guard was airdropping food and other supplies to people stranded in rural areas. Almost all public schools, and several colleges, were closed from Atlanta northward.

In Calhoun, Ga., at least 24 industrial buildings, many housing carpet manufacturers, collapsed under the weight of the wet snow. Several chicken houses were also reported crushed.

“We will have some hard nights, tonight and tomorrow night,” said Georgia Gov. Zell Miller. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

Even though the massive low pressure cell at the heart of the storm had disappeared Monday into the North Atlantic, forecasters said many areas already hard-hit could expect even more bad weather. As high pressure began to dominate the Eastern Seaboard, warm southeast winds blowing in behind it fed moisture into the mix that promised sleet and slush.

In North Georgia, for example, the prediction was for light sleet and even more snow Monday night.

Calmer seas, running at 6 feet compared to 30 feet or more at the height of the storm, aided the search for 16 people still missing along Florida’s coast. All along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts, 235 people and two dogs had been rescued, the Coast Guard said.

Among those picked up Sunday were 12 Cuban refugees who had left the Cayman Islands for Miami four days earlier.

The Cubans were pulled from their 24-foot motorboat in 30-foot seas by the captain of a fishing trawler who brought them to Key West.

Coast Guard spokesman Steve Sapp said last weekend was the service’s busiest in Florida in more than 50 years.

“The seas were absolutely incredible, unbelievable,” Coast Guard petty officer Rob Wyman told the Washington Post. “It looked like a big washing machine.”

Wyman flew on a helicopter rescue mission Saturday night to the Honduran freighter Fantastico, which ran aground 70 miles southwest of Ft. Myers. Two crewmen were found clinging to an overturned lifeboat.

For more than an hour, the Coast Guard tried to get the men into a basket dangling from the helicopter, but “they were either too weak to grab it or too scared to grab it,” Wyman said. “They were getting the hell beat out of them.”

Finally, the helicopter began running out of fuel.

“We left them,” Wyman said.

Ten miles southeast of Key West, the Coast Guard continued to monitor a 147-foot tanker, the Miss Beholding, which was grounded in the National Marine Sanctuary. On board: 5,000 gallons of fuel.

Although Florida’s bumper citrus crop was apparently spared serious frost damage, everything from tomatoes to tobacco and peaches in other parts of the South did suffer. “At this point I don’t want to hit a panic button, but we know there’s been damage,” said Tommy Irvin, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner.

California growers said the wind damage to Florida’s oranges and grapefruit won’t create any shortages or major price increases because the two leading citrus states are enjoying record harvests. And it appeared that damage to other crops, such as Georgia peaches, was not widespread enough to enrich the market for competitive products from California.

A brief price spike in fresh tomatoes and some other vegetables, destroyed by freezing temperatures in Northern Florida, could hit the nation in mid-April before California’s vegetable harvest begins to fill the gap.

A. M. Best, the leading rating agency for the insurance industry, estimated that the storm caused upward of $800 million in insured damages. That is more than the $650 million in damages caused of the Nor’easter that pounded the East Coast in December, but considerably under the $16 billion in losses caused by Hurricane Andrew last August.

Still, 30 deaths were reported in Florida, compared to a death toll of 17 in the state as a result of Hurricane Andrew.

In Florida, temperatures that had fallen to record lows in the mid-30s began to rise Monday, but brisk winds and unseasonable cold lingered. Gov. Lawton Chiles toured several areas north of Tampa that had been battered by tornadoes spawned by the storm system when it moved across the coast early Saturday.

Air traffic at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta was running at near-normal levels by Monday afternoon, and airports in the Northeast reported most runways had been cleared.

But further south, in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, hundreds of passengers continued to wait for flights north even as hundreds of college students began to arrive for spring break.

Stanley reported from Atlanta and Clary from Miami. Times staff writer Donald Woutat in Sacramento and researcher Anna Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.