Travelers, Heatless Residents Saved as Snow Continues Assault on Rockies, Plains States

Rescuers used helicopters, snowmobiles and military vehicles Sunday to pick up snowbound travelers and residents left without heat by a record blizzard that piled snowdrifts up to 15 feet high.

About eight people were unaccounted for Sunday in southeastern Colorado.

“We’re making herculean efforts to get into some of these areas,” said Steve Denney, a regional planner with the Colorado Office of Emergency Management.

At least two deaths were blamed on the storm, which blew through the Rockies and onto the Plains on Saturday. An unattended candle supplying light in a house without power started a fire that killed one woman in Omaha; it took firefighters about half an hour to reach the house because of the weather.

*

An 11-year-old boy from Stratton, in eastern Colorado, died Sunday after being found outside, a Denver hospital spokeswoman said. No further information was available about the boy.

The blizzard left as much as 50 inches of snow in the Colorado Rockies, 22 inches in parts of Denver and 35 inches in the suburbs.

Snow fell from eastern Kansas through Missouri and Iowa into Wisconsin and eastern Michigan on Sunday. Heavy snow fell in Utah on Friday, and flakes fell as far south as Texas on Saturday.

Thousands of customers were without electricity Sunday in Nebraska and Iowa.

Hundreds of miles of highways remained closed Sunday, including one 185-mile stretch of Interstate 80 across eastern Nebraska, and some travelers in Kansas were stymied by 4-foot drifts.

The Nebraska State Patrol estimated 200 vehicles were stranded Sunday.

There were no immediate reports of injuries to those stranded on the highways. Patrol officers worked to free the stranded motorists all day and expected that many of them would get out on their own.

At least 1,000 abandoned vehicles made it difficult for Colorado crews to plow out a 160-mile stretch of Interstate 25 that was closed from south of Denver to near the New Mexico line, said Bill Vidal, executive director of the state transportation department.

“The problem is locating the drivers or getting wreckers to move them out of the way,” Vidal said after flying over the region by helicopter Sunday with Gov. Roy Romer.

I-25 reopened Sunday afternoon.