Denver starts to plow its way out
The Mile High City began digging out from more than 2 feet of snow Thursday, as the region struggled to recover from a brutal blizzard that snarled travel nationwide.
Denver International Airport, the nation’s sixth-busiest, remained closed even after the storm tailed off in the early afternoon. Howling winds had created towering snowdrifts on the runways, and airport officials said they did not expect to have those cleared and the airport reopened until noon today.
Thousands of passengers who spent the night on the floors of the airport finally had a chance to escape Thursday afternoon, as buses began to take them to hotels in downtown Denver, 25 miles away. But airport officials warned that it could be a long time before travelers got home.
“The airlines will be operating with a reduced schedule,” said Chuck Cannon, an airport spokesman.
The blizzard, which hit town early Wednesday, was so strong that even snowplows got stuck in drifts. By late afternoon Thursday, transportation workers had cleared many of the state’s most-traveled highways and Denver’s main boulevards.
“Now that the snow has stopped, it’s given us exactly the break we needed,” said Stacey Stegman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation. “We definitely are feeling a sense of peace.”
As the plows scoured the highways, they uncovered about 600 abandoned cars that needed to be towed, Stegman said.
The storm had gained strength suddenly Tuesday night, and trapped thousands of commuters Wednesday.
Brian Cremo, 32, had just moved to Colorado from Fontana and woke that morning to light snow. He thought little of his 52-mile commute from his in-laws’ house to his office in central Denver.
His co-workers told him to get out shortly after he arrived, but the road back home was already closed. It took him five hours to travel a few miles south and find a Red Cross shelter at a high school, where he spent Wednesday night on a cot with about 40 other refugees.
On Thursday, as he prepared to head home, he marveled at life in a state with regular snowfall. “If this is the worst of it,” Cremo said, “it can only get better.”
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