Flood Advisories Follow as East Gets Break From Snow

After a blinding week of snow, weary East Coast residents took advantage of a break in the bitter weather Saturday to clean up cities paralyzed by waist-high snow.

Forecasters expressed concern that if the weather heated up too fast, there might be flooding. Temperatures on Saturday were slowly edging above freezing point.

The National Weather Service issued a flooding advisory late Friday in eight counties in the New York area. In Philadelphia--one of the cities hardest hit by the blizzard--rising temperatures led to some flooding on streets.

In Dale City, Va., the huge Potomac Mills Mall was closed Saturday after the roof began sagging under the weight of last week’s heavy snow.

Employees and moviegoers in the mall were evacuated, officials said. No one was injured.

The mall opened in September 1985. It’s one of the nation’s biggest, with 1.65 million square feet of space and 4,000 employees.

Elsewhere, a steel-beam and sheet-metal roof over an otherwise open ice-skating rink collapsed Saturday morning at Durham, N.H., less than an hour before 9- and 10-year-olds were to begin a hockey match. “We avoided a severe tragedy by only a few minutes,” Durham Fire Capt. Thomas Richardson said.

In Massachusetts, the Oakdale Mall in Tewksbury was closed Saturday after a 50-by-50-foot section of roof collapsed during the night. A theater complex in Norwell was condemned after part of the roof collapsed late Friday, and a 30-foot section of roof collapsed early Saturday at Boston’s Bayside Exposition Center.

In Washington, hordes of private contractors with massive snowplows were brought in to clean up the city.

Crews focused on digging out the business and government district first. The federal government is due to reopen this week after being closed for three weeks, first due to a budget dispute and then because of the snowfalls.