Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993 TAG: 9303160194
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SEARCHES, RESCUES, CLEANUP CONTINUE
Rescuers failed to find 24 hikers missing in the snowy southern Appalachians on Monday after dozens of others trudged through deep drifts to safety. Highway crews strained to reach thousands snowbound at home and in shelters by the weekend blizzard, and the death toll rose to 168.In addition to the deaths - reported from Cuba to Canada - 32 crewmen were missing after a freighter sank Monday off Nova Scotia, and 16 mariners were missing in waters around Florida.
Most major airports moved back toward normal operations. But because of delays in the East, "Normal won't be here until Tuesday or Wednesday," said Mary Francis Fagan of American Airlines at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
Commuters in big cities struggled to get to work.
"Getting to the train station was an event in itself," said suburban Philadelphia commuter Mark Cotterman, 32. "It was all packed down. There was hardly any traction at all." Many Pennsylvania businesses, schools, courthouses and state and local offices remained closed Monday.
Hundreds of thousands of homes still had no electricity, leaving many without heat while temperatures were in the single digits and lower. During the height of the storm Saturday, more than 3 million houses were blacked out.
A deep freeze that followed the storm was estimated to have caused millions of dollars in damage to Southern crops, from tomatoes to tobacco, blueberries to peaches. Florida crews rushed to harvest a large crop of oranges that gales knocked to the ground.
Insurance companies reported a rush of claims for damaged buildings and business losses. A.M. Best Co., the insurance industry rating agency, estimated that insured damages would be $800 million.
Teams from North Carolina and Tennessee searched the mountains of Great Smoky Mountains National Park for remaining members of a group of 117 teen-agers and adults from a Detroit-area private school who had been hiking on an annual spring break trek when the storm struck. The search for 21 students and three adults still missing was called off at nightfall.
Among the 93 accounted for, one faculty leader was in stable condition at a hospital, while the seven to nine members of his group were being examined, said officials at the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Middle School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
One group of 20 students emerged from the woods as scheduled Monday afternoon, school spokesman Ray Carson said. "They had no idea there was a problem," he said.
"All of them had wilderness survival training," Carson said. "They knew first aid. They were prepared for this kind of storm. They were as prepared as you can be for 2 feet of snow."
Canadian rescuers searched the sea off Nova Scotia for 32 British and Chinese crew members of a freighter that sank early Monday in 60-foot seas. One body had been found.
Calmer weather allowed helicopters to search for some of 16 people missing in waters near Florida, but none was found. By nightfall the search was called off for most of them, including four from a Honduran freighter that sank off Fort Myers; three people from that ship were rescued and three died.
Interstate 65, the main north-south highway through Alabama, was reopened Monday but with only one lane in each direction. All 559 miles of the New York State Thruway reopened Monday; plows battled 12-foot drifts, spokesman David Ardman said. The entire Pennsylvania Turnpike also was reopened Monday.
North Carolina officials estimated 160,300 people were still snowbound at home or in shelters in the state's mountains because secondary roads had not been plowed.
Keywords:
FATALITY