Six dead, streets flooded, cities paralyzed by massive East Coast storm
March 3, 2018 at 11:36 AM
Over the past 48 hours a deadly nor’easter turned a thousand-mile stretch of the East Coast into a wind tunnel, leaving millions without power, paralyzing flooded cities and towns and claiming the lives of at least six people — many of whom had tried in vain to take shelter from hurricane-force winds.
With the worst mostly over by Saturday morning, people from Maine to Georgia emerged from homes to take stock of the damage.
Some of those first glimpses came in the dark. At its peak, winds had knocked out power to more than 2 million people, including more than 400,000 in Massachusetts and 320,000 across the state of New York. Thousands of flights were grounded at some of the country’s busiest airports, causing a ripple effect of delays and cancellations around the world.
On the ground, highways across the Northeast were clogged with tractor trailers and buses, which were prohibited from crossing some of the region’s massive bridges due to the treacherous winds. In smaller cities and towns, particularly those near the vulnerable coast, roads had turned into rivers.
The people killed during the storm include a 6-year-old, killed in his bed when a tree came crashing down into his family’s home in Chester, Va.; a 72-year-old Newport, R.I., man, killed by a falling tree; a 77-year-old woman in Baltimore County, Md., who met a similar fate; and two men — one in James County, Va., another in Connecticut — who were killed when tree branches fell on their cars.
Because of the dangerous conditions, more than 3,000 domestic and international flights were canceled in the United States on Friday, according to FlightAware.com, most with destinations or departures in the Northeast Corridor, The Washington Post’s Dana Hedgpeth and Luz Lazo reported. About a third of those flights were at LaGuardia Airport, the East Coast’s primary transportation hub. More than 400 were canceled at Boston Logan Airport; another 300 were canceled at airports in the D.C. region.
Flights were suspended at LaGuardia airport on Friday afternoon, according to the New York Times. The Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary ground stops at Dulles for about an hour Friday afternoon because of the high winds, and, at one point, the Dulles air traffic control tower was evacuated.
One flight encountered such heavy turbulence that “pretty much everyone on the plane threw up. Pilots were on the verge of throwing up,” the pilot said in an urgent report from a regional jetliner from Charlottesville. Amtrak also briefly suspended train service because of outages in New York City.
In other pockets the storm dropped large amounts of precipitation, including heavy snowfall, or its winds pushed in seawater during high tides, inundating bayside neighborhoods.
Portions of New York state received more than three feet of snow. Syracuse University canceled a full day of classes because of snow for only the third time in its history.
First responders in Quincy, Mass., spent Friday night rescuing nearly 100 people who were suddenly trapped by rising floodwaters.
“I’m fortunate to get rescued,” Christine Way-Cotter of Quincy told Boston CBS-affiliate WBZ, according to CNN. “Our house is lifted so, like, nothing came into our first floor but our whole basement is probably 6 feet underwater.”
Communities like Quincy found themselves increasingly attuned to the tide, which was wreaking the most havoc in seaside cities.
On Friday afternoon, it peaked at 14.67 feet, the third-highest level since authorities began keeping records in 1928. Stranded people feared there would be a similar historic high-tide around midnight, causing a flooding risk in the dark as people were sleeping. But midnight’s tide was 13.87 feet, nearly a foot lower, according to the Boston Globe.
With the winds and most of the precipitation abating, Saturday’s noontime tide may be the last vestige of this storm.
Theodore L. Keon, director of coastal resources for Chatham, a particularly vulnerable seaside town on the southeastern tip of Cape Cod, spent the days before the storm supervising employees hauling in tons of sand.
“I’m concerned mostly because of the duration of this event,” Keon said Friday. “The last two January storms, while significant in terms of water elevation, were of fairly short duration.
“When you’ve got a storm like this that sits off the coast and you’ve got the constant pounding of the waves and high water because it’s not receding, that’s potentially more significant. Three or maybe even four high-tide cycles can really cause a lot of damage.”
Weintraub reported from Cambridge; Wootson and Wang reported from Washington. Bill Hewitt contributed reporting from Dennis, Mass. Eli Rosenberg and Keith McMillan contributed from Washington.
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