Savage storm cripples Eastern US

Schools closed and traffic ground to a halt yesterday as storms lashed the eastern United States. Photo / AP

NEW YORK - A ferocious storm packing freezing rain, heavy snow and furious wind gusts paralysed most of the East Coast yesterday, sending dozens of cars careening into ditches, grounding hundreds of flights and closing school for millions of kids.

The devastating effects of the storm were seen up and down the coast. A crash caused a 25-kilometre traffic jam in North Carolina, forcing police and the Red Cross to go car-to-car to check on stranded drivers. The storm was blamed for 350 crashes in New Jersey, and a Maryland official counted about 50 cars in the ditch on one stretch of highway.

The storm moved north into New England, and most areas in the storm's wake expected to see up to 31 centimetres of snow. The weather contributed to four deaths on roads in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and on Long Island.

The South was especially hard hit, dealing with record snowfalls, thick ice and hundreds of thousands of power outages in a region not accustomed to such vicious weather.

In North Carolina, Raleigh got more than three inches of snow; the March snowfall for the city has exceeded three inches only 11 times in the last 122 years. The Weather Service said parts of Tennessee received the biggest snowfall since 1968.

Travellers were stranded everywhere, with most flights cancelled at the three main airports in the New York area and at Boston's Logan International Airport. The Boston airport had to shut down for about 40 minutes to clear a runway.

Philadelphia declared a Code Blue weather emergency, which gives officials the authority to bring homeless people into shelters because the weather poses a threat of serious harm or death.

Dozens of schools across North Carolina, South Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Maine gave children a snow day. Schools in Philadelphia, Boston and New York City did the same. It was the first time in more than five years that New York City called off classes for its 1.1 million public school students.

Some New York parents complained that the city waited until 5:40 a.m. to call off classes, saying they didn't have enough notice. Mayor Michael Bloomberg brushed off the criticism and praised the city's storm response, which included dispatching 2,000 workers and 1,400 ploughs to work around the clock to clean New York's 6,000 miles of streets.

"It's like ploughing from here to Los Angeles and back," Bloomberg said at a news conference, standing in front of an orange snow plough at a garage. Central Park recorded 7 inches of snow, and more than a foot was reported on parts of Long Island, where high winds caused 2-foot drifts on highways in the Hamptons.

-AP