Northeast begins shoveling out

A day after a fierce blizzard clobbered much of the Northeast, a brilliant sun blazed down from cerulean skies and hundreds of cities and towns shoveled and sledded their way back to life.

Airlines resumed limited service at major airports, but more than 760 additional flights were scrubbed, most in the New York area, which bore the brunt of the mammoth nor’easter that roared up the East Coast on Sunday and Monday.

The extent of the chaos, and the challenge of the cleanup, became evident Tuesday amid the endless snowy landscapes, ankle-deep puddles of city slush and harrowing stories of white-out conditions and treacherous roads.

As New Yorkers dug out from what tabloid headlines dubbed a “snowpocalypse,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said tow trucks had removed about 1,000 vehicles abandoned or stuck on three of the city’s outer expressways alone. Subways and commuter trains limped back into service, but on a weekend schedule

“This storm is not like any other we’ve had to deal with,” he said at a news conference.

The No. 1 challenge, Bloomberg added, was finding and digging out emergency vehicles that got stuck while responding to a flood of 911 calls.

“Until we can pull out the ambulances, pull out the fire trucks, pull out the buses, pull out the private cars, the plows just can’t do anything,” he said. “We still have a long way to go.”

The mayor added, “Obviously stuck ambulances with patients on board are handled first.” Crews freed 168 snowbound ambulances overnight, he said, but “some of them, unfortunately, got restuck.”

Citing efforts to borrow and hire extra tow trucks and equipment from around the region, Bloomberg called the operation “the biggest effort to clear snow that our city has ever seen.”

Air traffic was still curtailed at the region’s airports, normally among the nation’s busiest, and stranded passengers were stretched out in sleeping bags and blankets on the floor. Small children curled up for naps in large plastic luggage tubs.

Thousands of passengers who hoped to rebook flights stood or sat in luggage-strewn lines that snaked down the terminals. In some cases, the crowds were so tangled that it wasn’t clear which line went to which counter.

At least 700 flights were canceled by midafternoon Tuesday at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark international airports, said Sara Beth Joren, spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

She could not say when normal operations would resume. Many flights already were nearly full in the busy season between Christmas and New Year’s, and “with a storm of this size, it’s going to take some time,” Joren said.

Some 64 flights were canceled at Philadelphia International Airport. More than 300 passengers were forced to bed down in the terminal Monday night, down from more than 1,200 the night before, said Victoria Lupica, airport spokeswoman.

“In an emergency like this, we provide pillows, blankets, snacks, water, a diaper, anything we can do to make them comfortable,” Lupica said.

The ripple effect of the delays, cancellations and flights diverted to other airports added to the post-Christmas confusion at air hubs across the country, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

Some took the snow in stride.

Karen Fischer and Tyler Cleveland brought their combined family of five children from Calgary, Canada, to spend New Year’s Eve watching the ball drop in Times Square — and they wouldn’t be deterred by a little snow.

They were supposed to arrive Monday, but their Air Canada flight was canceled. So they slept in an airport hotel and managed to find a flight to Newark early Tuesday. They caught a train into Manhattan and were searching for a cab to haul them to their hotel.

“We landed and we were like, ‘Where’s the snow?’ I mean, really, we’re from Canada,” Fischer said.

Others turned adversity into adventure.

Linda Menard and her three daughters — ages 18, 16 and 13 — had taken a train from Boston to see a Broadway show. They arrived in the blizzard Monday, saw the musical “Elf,” slogged past mountains of snow to see the giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, and were back in Pennsylvania Station late Tuesday waiting for their train home.

“Our taxi got stuck twice in the snow and finally we jumped ship and walked,” said Allie Menard, the eldest sister, a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who was home for the holidays. “That’s life.”

Baum reported from New York and Drogin from Silver Spring.

geraldine.baum@latimes.com

bob.drogin@latimes.com