US Northeast digs out from deadly blizzard

The northeast of the United States crawled out from under a mammoth blizzard Sunday that caused at least eight deaths and paralyzed the region with high winds and heaps of snow. An estimated 350,000 customers were still without power in the wake of the storm that struck a slew of states and dumped as much as three feet of snow across New England before battering three Canadian provinces. The majority of the service disruptions were in hard hit Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick said outages were at 250,000, down from 400,000 Saturday. As crews worked to clear roads and sidewalks, travel conditions in the area slowly began to pick up and return to normal. New York area airports LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark, which halted all flights during the height of the storm, resumed service Saturday with some delays. Boston's Logan International Airport meanwhile warned travelers Sunday it was still experiencing some weather-related delays and cancellations. FlightAware.com, which on Saturday listed almost 2,000 cancellations around the area, said 87 flights were scrapped at Logan, compared to 13 at JFK, two at LaGuardia and 11 at Canada's Halifax Stanfield International Airport. To facilitate the cleanup efforts, President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration for the state of Connecticut Sunday, where Governor Dannel Malloy said it appeared that most, if not all counties had been hit with record or near record snowfall. Some 25,000 people remained without power in the state, according to Connecticut Light & Power. As a thousand people in Massachusetts sought relief in shelters, Patrick said a major challenge, aside from cleaning up and restoring power, was making sure public transportation was back up and running by Monday morning. "We're trying to make sure that public transit is fully functioning in time for tomorrow's commute," he told broadcaster CBS. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the National Grid power company said it was warning some of its customers in the southeast of the state that they may not have electricity restored before Tuesday. "It's a possibility," said Charlotte McCormack, adding that some 72,000 of its customers remained without power in Rhode Island. "We took a very major blow, but the state's responding very well," said Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed. The storm also took a human toll. A Massachusetts boy aged 11 died when he and his father were warming up in their car and inhaled carbon monoxide after an exhaust pipe had been blocked by snow. A car driven by a young woman went out of control in the snow on a highway in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, striking and killing a 74-year-old man who was walking on the shoulder of the road. And in Auburn, New Hampshire, a man was killed after losing control of his car and hitting a tree, local officials said. Four other storm-related deaths were reported in Connecticut and, according to media reports, a fatal crash in Maine claimed another life. Minor injuries were reported in a 19-car pileup on Interstate 295 in Falmouth, Maine, caused by poor visibility and slippery road conditions. The storm came a little over three months after Hurricane Sandy devastated swaths of New York and New Jersey, killing 132 people and causing damage worth some $71.4 billion. As the East Coast slowly breathed a sigh of relief, the National Weather Service warned of a new blizzard taking aim at the US northern plains. "A blizzard will continue across the north central US, where heavy snow will combine with strong gusty winds to produce dangerous whiteout conditions," it said.