Blizzard Pounds East; Toll Up to 40

One of the fiercest storms in a generation pounded the East Monday, causing at least 40 deaths and leaving cities from Boston to Baltimore in knee-deep snow. The nation’s capital turned into a ghost town where the federal government remained in hibernation.

Only the adventurous and foolhardy ventured out. Airports in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., Boston and New York City shut down. Cab drivers stayed home, shopping malls were shuttered. Mail delivery was halted in Washington and New York City, and hundreds of schools were closed from Georgia to New Hampshire. New York City’s 1 million schoolchildren enjoyed their first day off because of snow since 1978.

Before the storm eased by midday, 20.1 inches of snow had fallen in New York’s Central Park, making it the third worst on record after the blizzards of 1947--which dumped 26 inches--and 1888 when 30 inches fell. Philadelphia recorded 30.3 inches, Baltimore 23 inches, Boston and Washington both 17 inches. More than 3 feet fell on parts of Virginia and 2 feet on the upper reaches of North Carolina.

States of emergency were declared in all or parts of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Delaware. Hospitals in Maryland and Virginia asked for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles to bring in doctors and nurses.

Many of the deaths were caused by traffic accidents or heart attacks while shoveling snow. A man in New Jersey and a child in New York were struck and killed by snowplows.

But hardships generally were minimized by accurate prediction of the timing and intensity of the storm, which originated over the Rockies last week. For most, the storm brought little more than inconvenience and some envious sighs when dawn-to-dusk TV coverage reported that Southern California was basking in record high temperatures.

“You can really appreciate the beauty because the city is at a standstill,” said a cheery Andrew Glickman, pushing his way on skis through Washington’s Dupont Circle. “I’m having a great time. Fabulous. This is the sort of snow you dream of.”

In Pelham, N.Y., lawyer Richard McGrath gave up trying to get to work in New York City and came home to go sledding with his children. Another Pelham resident, Eileen Wolfe, rushed outside with her camera. “You’ll never see this place more beautiful,” she said. “Shoveling will be hard, but by afternoon we’ll be ready for margaritas.”

Meanwhile, airports struggled to clear runways and reopen. Airlines reported canceling 7,600 flights Tuesday, or roughly one-third of all scheduled flights in the country, all due to the storm.

About 1,700 people were stuck at New York’s three major airports, which are not expected to begin operations until today. The Port Authority reported drifts as high as 20 feet on some runways. In Boston, Logan Airport shut down at 1 p.m. Sunday for what turned out to be its longest closure in 18 years.

Throngs Stranded

Throngs of passengers en route to the Northeast also were stuck Monday at airports in the Midwest and South--unable to go on because connecting flights had been canceled. Many clamored for the airlines to ease their misery by picking up the tab for a hotel room. In hubs such as Atlanta and Cincinnati, hundreds of passengers found themselves stranded, Delta spokesman Neil Monroe said. Requests that Delta pay for hotel rooms were being handled on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Travelers piled on Amtrak trains, some of which made it to their destinations. But an Amtrak train from Chicago to Washington got stuck in West Virginia when a freight train derailed; and a southbound train from Boston had to be towed into New York’s Penn Station because of a power failure.

One of the passengers, Brett Ginter, let other riders make calls on his cellular telephone, asking only for a beer in return for his generosity. The train was stuck for three hours. By the time the bar car went dry, he figured he had drunk eight to 10 cans.

Commuter trains fared no better. When one in Westchester County, north of New York City became stuck in the snow, the engineer borrowed a snow shovel being carried by a passenger. The engineer dug out part of the track so electricity once again could flow to the lead car’s generator and the train could limp to a nearby station.

The Long Island Rail Road offered $12 an hour to people willing to shovel its station platform and steps, and reported a huge response.

Snowplows running in tandem kept open at least one lane on Interstate 95--the East’s main thoroughfare from Maine to Florida--but in the cities and towns most secondary roads were impassable. Renualt Evans of Orange, N.J., pulled into a motel after a five-hour delay on the New Jersey Turnpike that was eventually closed to all but emergency traffic and said, “You gotta know when to quit.”

1,300 Snowplows

New York called out 1,300 snowplows and 350 salt-spreaders to clear the streets. The United Nations closed, sending 10,000 workers home. The New York Mercantile and New York Commodity Exchanges were closed and the New York Stock Exchange opened an hour late and closed early. Trading was light. Broadway generally was dark as most stage shows were canceled.

Manhattan, one resident said, resembled “a gigantic picture postcard” as skiers glided down empty streets, past cars buried in drifted snow, and Central Park filled up with sledders. But with garbage collection suspended until the end of the week, cleaning up was going to be a monumental and expensive undertaking.

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani cruised the boroughs in a Jeep to inspect road-clearing operations. He ordered only essential city employees to report for work Tuesday. The city’s schools will also remain closed today.

Philadelphia, perhaps the hardest hit city of all, had a record snowfall. Residents there could not even read about their predicament Monday because delivery trucks from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News were confined to their garages.

In Boston, grocery store shelves were stripped and burly policemen grabbed shovels to help residents as snow fell at the rate of an inch an hour. Only the “T”--the city’s trusty, venerable old subway system--chugged along, pretty much on schedule.

Tom Menino, the mayor of Boston, implored residents not to throw snow into the streets as they dug out their cars. On Commonwealth Avenue clouds of powdery white rose as shovelers ignored the plea. But for the most part, police Lt. Bob O’Toole said, “Common-sense and patience have prevailed. People have been asked to stay home, and they are doing so.”

In Washington, where just the prospect of light snow can bring near-hysteria with school cancellations and closed offices, the capital knew it had been hit by the real thing. Secretary of State Warren Christopher canceled plans to fly to Paris for a conference and Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Phil Gramm of Texas couldn’t make it to New Hampshire for a Republican campaign dinner. One supermarket chain, Giant Food, reported its busiest day in history as customers lined up for both food and shopping carts.

“The biggest problem isn’t that the kids are going to drive you nuts, it’s how to get the dog outside to go to the bathroom,” said Vivian Deuschl, a Ritz-Carlton executive who pushed her 110-pound Labrador out the kitchen door and watched him sink in snow up to his shoulders. Dexter stayed immobile in the drift, looking woeful and doing nothing productive, until coaxed back inside with a cookie.

“This is the first time I’ve ever believed a weather forecast,” said innkeeper John Sherman, after emptying the Ashby Inn in Paris, Va., of 18 guests and helping push the last car from his parking lot moments before the full force of the storm struck. “One night in a country inn with a closed kitchen might sound romantic; two wouldn’t.”

In some of the small towns outside Washington, the snow shut down all signs of life. In Vienna, Va., about 15 miles west, most stores and businesses, including service stations, were closed and the post office betrayed its “neither-rain-nor-sleet . . . “ pledge. By midday the only marks on some normally busy thoroughfares were those left by cross-country skis. Neighbors were checking on senior citizens, particularly those in houses with doors blocked by drifts or those who were trying to dig out their driveways alone.

The two-day storm abated late Monday afternoon and in Washington gave way to clear, blue skies and the sounds of shovels scrapping pavement. For some, like Jeff Wong, a physician who had worked an overnight hospital shift and had to abandon his car in the middle of Washington’s New Hampshire Avenue, the storm was nothing but a pain. “I guess I made a mistake trying to get home,” Wong said.

But for others there was something magical in the blizzard that had taken gray cities and dressed them in white. Strangers greeted one another as they passed in the streets and volunteers stopped to push and shovel stuck cars free, without asking for a dime in return. In Bethesda, Md., Monica Malout and her husband, Ralph Baise, formed a neighborhood snow-shovel brigade to clear passages for older residents.

And everywhere in Washington, on the local TV stations that preempted regular scheduling and in the few bars and coffee shops that were open, no one talked of anything but the Blizzard of ‘96, as though some great shared event had threaded through a disparate community.

Perhaps when all was said and done, Bob Tolf offered the best perspective in this purposeful, dark-suited city as he plodded to his office at an international organization, carrying an attache case and a cup of coffee: “No one else is at work but I thought I’d go in and answer calls. People calling from Argentina don’t know it’s snowing in Washington.”

Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren and Ed Chen in Washington, Elizabeth Mehren in Boston, John J. Goldman in New York, Barry Bearak in Pelham, N.Y., and Alan Abrahamson in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

* BUSINESS DISRUPTED: Storm shortens stock trading and hits Southland firms. D1.

* RELATED STORY: B1