Wicked Winter: New England Slammed With Another Blast

Deep Freeze

By  Daniel Arkin

Old Man Winter showed no signs of slowing down Sunday, hammering New England with another storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on Massachusetts and lashed Cape Cod with fierce winds that cut off power for thousands.

The wild weather is just the latest chapter in a seemingly endless winter that has nearly ground to a halt a wide swath of the country and severely strained emergency services as well as road, water and power systems. Workers were still scrambling to fix collapsed roofs, burst pipes and flooded streets.

As the storm wreaked havoc overnight, coastal areas in Maine and south of Boston appeared to be hit the hardest.

Winter Weather Takes Toll on Infrastructure

Nearly 15 inches of snow was reported in Sandwich, Mass., and 10 inches was reported in New Bedford and Plymouth. All the while, powerful gusts still threatened to down power lines and tree limbs through early Monday, the National Weather Service said.

Dispatchers with the Sandwich police and fire departments told The Boston Globe the town had a few minor car accidents and brief power outages, but there were not reports of major damage.  Sergeant Walter Warren of the Yarmouth Police Department told the newspaper the storm left the biggest dent in the town’s electricity infrastructure.  “The only damage we had was a lot of transformers and downed lines and downed trees and that’s about it,” he said told the newspaper Sunday morning.

Heavy winds of upwards of 50 mph were reported Saturday night on Cape Cod, where utility company NStar said roughly 2,800 customers were without electricity Sunday evening, according to NBC affiliate WHDH in Boston.

The uility expected that most power will be back late Sunday, but restoration efforts will run into Monday, according to the station.  "The effects of this storm compared to those of this winter's last few storms have caused much more damage to our electrical system," Craig Hallstrom, President of NStar Electric, told the station.

Crews from Connecticut were dispatched to Massachusetts to help fix the power outages after more than 13,000 customers greeted the day in the dark.  The snow reached 17 inches in Hancock, Maine, and in Eastport, the easternmost city in the country. The Department of Transportation said it sent out 375 trucks statewide at the peak of the storm Saturday evening.  Transportation officials in Rhode Island cautioned drivers to brace for treacheous travel conditions through the Monday morning rush, blaming depleted road salt supplies that forced them to use only a limited amount ahead of the storm.  The Rhode Island Department of Transportation said it was using sand for traction on roadways that were left slickened by snow and ice, but that roads were likely to freeze again Sunday night — and black ice was likely.

Rhode Island was slammed by between 3 and 8 inches of snow, the National Weather Service said.

The weekend snowstorm follows an earlier storm that covered the East Coast with snow and ice, causing at least 25 deaths and leaving hundreds of thousands without power.

And it comes after a powerful and rare storm walloped the Southeast, snarling traffic and cutting off power across wide swaths of Georgia and South Carolina.  Roughly 22,000 utility customers still didn't have power Sunday evening in South Carolina, according to The Weather Channel. At the height of the storm's fury Wednesday, some 350,000 customers lost power across the state.  Thousands of customers in Georgia were also still dealing with power outages on Sunday as well, according to The Weather Channel.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Elderly driver backs over 7, killing 3, after church in Florida

WFLA-TV

An investigator and a bystander at the scene of an accident that killed three elderly women Sunday in Bradenton, Fla.

By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News

An elderly Florida woman is unlikely to face criminal charges after she backed out of a parking space into a crowd of pedestrians, killing three senior citizens, authorities said Monday.
Doreen Landstra, 79, of Bradenton, Fla., lost control of her Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility vehicle after church late Sunday morning at Sugar Creek Country Club, the state Highway Patrol said.

---

Landstra began backing out of a handicapped parking space but then pulled forward to negotiate another parked vehicle, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. As she tried to pull back out, the rear of the SUV struck seven pedestrians standing in the parking lot, it said.
Margaret Vanderlaan, 72, Wilhemina Paul, 70, Johanna Dijkhoff, 80, were killed. Four other people were treated at hospitals.

State Trooper Kenn Watson said it was unlikely that Landstra would face charges because neither alcohol nor drugs were and involved, and "obviously, there was no intent."  

Landstra was issued a non-criminal citation for improper backing and will likely have her driver's license permanently revoked, Watson told NBC station WFLA of Tampa.   

Watson said the incident raised the question of when someone is too old to drive.  "I understand this is a quality-of-life issue," he said. "However, we do not want to endanger our friends or our neighbors by allowing them to continue to drive."  An average of 15 people ages 65 and older die in automobile accidents every day in the U.S., according to research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Pilot called a hero for avoiding buildings in Tennessee plane crash that killed 4

NBC News

By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News

Four people were killed aboard a light plane that crashed Monday near Nashville, Tenn., authorities said. The dead included the pilot, who witnesses and fire officials said saved many lives by narrowly avoiding a nearby YMCA building.
The plane, a Gulfstream 690C flying from Grand Bend Municipal Airport in Kansas to John C. Tune-Nashville International Airport, went down shortly before 5 p.m. ET just outside the YMCA in Bellevue, about 15 miles southwest of Nashville. Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, told NBC News it was carrying four people, according to its flight plan.

---

All aboard the plane were killed, Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said. No injuries were reported at the YMCA, which was evacuated after the plane slammed into the ground just 20 feet from its wall.

"While details of the crash are still emerging, the near-miss of our building surely saved dozens of people from harm," the YMCA of Middle Tennessee said in a statement Monday night, adding that its prayers "continue to be with the victims' families and all those affected by the crash."  Aaron said the plane missed its first approach to the Nashville airport. It was circling back to make a second attempt and was coming in low, he said.  "The crash was very hard," he said. "The impact was very severe into the ground," strewing debris over an 80-yard area.  Three of the bodies had been recovered by late Monday evening, Aaron said, and "I understand that there are body parts [still] here."

As the smoky heap of rubble continued smoldering Monday night, Metro Nashville Fire District Chief George Hickey told reporters that it could have been much, much worse. Witnesses reported seeing the plane bank hard to the right and crash into the ground, he said — near not only the YMCA building but also a retirement home.

"No buildings were hit," Hickey said. "I may be wrong, but I really want to take my hat off to the pilot."
Hickey called it "the worst plane crash I've ever seen."

Ambulances transported no one from the scene, which Hickey called "a totally devastated area."
"The pilot did one hell of a job," he said.  Morgan MacGavin, who was at a nearby Starbucks, told the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville that the flames were so high and the smoke was so thick that it was impossible to tell at first what had exploded there.

"It looked like a massive bonfire," MacGavin said. "It didn't hit the building, but it's pretty close to the side of the building.  "That just breaks my heart," she said. "My heart just breaks for whoever that is and their family."  Foul play wasn't suspected, Aaron said. Bergen said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.