The north-eastern United States was emerging on Monday from a snowstorm, ranked among the five worst in the past century, that was linked to at least 18 deaths across eight states.
The storm, which started in the Midwest on Friday, dumped 30cm of snow in Detroit, 35cm in New York City, and close to a metre in some parts of the state of Massachusetts.
At least 18 deaths in eight states were linked to the storm, including that of a 10-year-old girl struck by a snow plow as she played on a snow bank in New York, media reports said.
Five people collapsed while shovelling snow in New York, and one in Boston, apparently having suffered heart attacks, according to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Storm-related deaths were also reported in Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Iowa.
The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey declared emergencies in their states, warning people to stay home to facilitate road clearance on Monday. Boston area schools were to be closed until Wednesday.
Boston’s Logan International airport remained closed early on Monday. Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled at airports in north-eastern and Midwestern US states as residents dug out from the first major snowstorm of the year.
”The blizzard of 2005 will go down in history as one of the five top snowstorms for eastern New England,” said James Wilson, a meteorologist with the Weather Channel.
At one point on Sunday, 20cm of snow fell in 75 minutes in Chatham, Massachusetts, the channel said.
Authorities were warning of brutal cold on Monday up and down the east coast from the Great Lakes region down to Florida, with high winds sending temperatures well below minus 18 degrees Celsius in many areas.
Airlines were still dealing with the fallout of thousands of flight delays and cancellations over the weekend in Chicago, New York, Boston and smaller cities.
Philadelphia International airport in Pennsylvania reopened on Sunday after being closed late on Saturday because of poor visibility, but significant delays as well as flight cancellations were reported at other airports, including some in New Jersey, Baltimore in Maryland, and Washington.
British airports cancelled 31 flights to and from the US’s north-east region, officials said in London on Sunday.
London’s main Heathrow airport cancelled 29 arrivals and departures after heavy snowfall in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
US authorities begged people to stay off the roads as high winds blowing snow produced white-out conditions from New York to Maine, bringing normally congested cities to a standstill.
”Any travel is strongly discouraged,” the National Weather Service warned Massachusetts residents early on Sunday. ”If you leave the safety of being indoors, you are putting your life at risk.”
A large sector of downtown Toronto, Canada’s largest city, was without power on Sunday after a water main burst, apparently from frigid temperatures a day after the giant storm hammered southern Canada.
Several large hospitals used emergency power generators as repair crews braved temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius trying to restore power. — Sapa-AFP