Millions head for work after East Coast snowstorm-Frozen nightmare,historical blizzard

Telescope viewers are covered in snow overlooking Lighthouse Beach Sunday in Chatham, Mass. Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009, during the first major snowstorm of the season.



(left)Rhonda Fauria, of North Attleboro, Mass., right, shops with her children Kiki, 3, left, and Caleb, 8, at a Target store in North Attleboro Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009. A snowstorm blanketed much of New England in the final shopping weekend before Christmas.Raymond Brockmann, of North Attleboro, Mass., shops at a Toys "R" Us store in North Attleboro, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009. The storm that stretched along the East Coast affected about one-third of Toys R' US stores, but sales weren't as bad as expected.



Snow crews continue to clear the tarmac of snow at Reagan National Airport in Washington, on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009, after the airport was closed due to a large snow storm that hit the region on Saturday


The White House is seen the day after a snowstorm blanketed the region in Washington, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009.(left).Juanita Streat, left, and her daughters, Tayluer Streat, 12, center, and Jazmine Brownlee, 16, sled down the snow covered steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the aftermath of a snow storm in Philadelphia, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009.



On his third day at snowbound Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Gordon Frazer was running out of time and options.

Sunday's flight home to Atlanta was canceled, just as it had been Friday and Saturday. The short, two-hour trip on any normal day had been transformed into a 72-hour, frozen nightmare.

"Now, they are saying there are no more flights 'til Wednesday," said Frazer, 43, a cellphone jammed to his left ear. "I'm thinkin' rental car."

On the day after a historic blizzard paralyzed the eastern seaboard, the Christmas card-perfect snowfall was creating a grim holiday scenario: It could take days, perhaps longer, before the nation's crippled air transportation system fully recovers and thousands of holiday travelers — including Frazer — reach their destinations.

"Full recovery may take well into Tuesday," said Air Transport Association spokesman David Castelveter. "We haven't seen anything like this since 1996. The sad news here is that's happening on the weekend before Christmas, when so many people are traveling."

The storm resulted in thousands of canceled flights across all airlines. And with so many seats booked for the holidays, airlines warned Sunday they may have few open seats to dole out to customers who couldn't make their original flights.


"It's really market by market," said George Hobica, founder of the website airfarewatchdog.com. "Some routes are going to be absolutely sold out, but others won't be a problem."

Even other transportation alternatives could be out of reach for some stranded travelers: About 15% of Amtrak trains in the Northeast corridor either were canceled or delayed over the weekend, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole said. Delays will continue today.

"We'll be running, but there may be some ripple effects," Cole said.

The bad news was extending far beyond the terminals filled with stranded passengers.

The record snowfall also hammered the nation's retailers on the last big shopping weekend before Christmas.

Instead of traffic-choked shopping centers, many mall parking lots from Richmond to Boston were quiet and vacant, except for heavy blankets of snow.

Even Hollywood was expecting a case of long-distance frostbite, as East Coast moviegoers were stranded at home. Box office numbers for the science-fiction epic Avatar were down 18% below projections in New York, 57% in Philadelphia, 75% in Washington and 86% in Baltimore, according to 20th Century Fox studio research.

"The East Coast virtually shut down," studio spokesman Chris Aronson said.

Shopping rush to come?

The snowstorm hit on the busiest shopping day before Christmas, threatening holiday sales that already have been depressed by a weak economy and creating the possibility of delayed package deliveries.

While regional sales may have been hurt, the overall impact on holiday sales likely will be negligible, said Paul Walsh, a meteorologist who tracks the impact of weather on retail sales for Atmospheric & Environmental Research in Lexington, Mass.

Weather this holiday shopping season has been much less severe than it was a year ago, Walsh said.

Taubman Centers, which owns and operates 24 shopping centers around the country, closed four of its malls early on Saturday in Virginia and New Jersey because of the weather. But traffic was brisk at Taubman shopping centers in other parts of the country, spokeswoman Karen MacDonald said. Stores in Taubman's mall in Denver reported that Saturday was their busiest day this year, MacDonald said.

Forecasts of the impending storm led many consumers in the Mid-Atlantic region to get their shopping done Friday night, analysts said.

"I was in stores Friday night in New York City, and there were significant crowds," said John Long, retail strategist for Kurt Salmon Associates. "That's different than what I have been seeing in New York to date. It may have happened because of the storm."

Now that the blizzard has passed, Long expects the crowds to continue through Christmas Eve. "Consumers are going to plan to hit the stores hard," he said. "So it's going to make what's effectively a concentrated shopping period a real Christmas rush. We would expect big crowds."

The big winners were online retailers who saw a 24% spike in sales on Friday and Saturday over the same two days last year, according to John Squire, chief strategy officer for Coremetrics. Coremetrics doesn't break down sales by region, but purchases by East Coast shoppers who couldn't get to malls may have contributed to the increase, Squire said.

The success of package deliveries will depend on how quickly state and local highway departments clear snow-covered roads, officials with express delivery companies said.

"Delays, if any, will only be local," UPS spokesman Michael French said. "If the roads are clear, there won't be any delays."

Airport closings over the weekend meant that some FedEx planes couldn't land, but the company intends to fly additional planes and put extra trucks on the road when possible, spokeswoman Sally Davenport said.

"The fortunate thing is our major hubs are in Memphis and Indianapolis, and those have not been affected" by the weather, she says.

Thursday was FedEx's ground-shipping deadline for delivery by Christmas, Davenport says. For customers who shipped a package by the deadline, "we will be doing everything we can to get it there by Christmas," she says.

Procrastinators still have time to ship items by express, "assuming Mother Nature plays nice the next couple of days," Davenport says. "We have all resources on deck and ready to go."

Cancellations and delays

Buried under more than a foot of snow, airports along the East Coast began rumbling back to life early Sunday.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr said Washington Dulles International and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were each operating two runways Sunday. Reagan National also was expected to open a second runway late Sunday.

Cancellations and delays were piling up throughout the region.

• At Reagan National, 40 cancellations were posted on the main terminal's electronic scheduling board Sunday afternoon.

• On Saturday and Sunday, 1,200 flights were canceled in New York, according to The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region's major airports.

• Snow was still falling Sunday in Boston. And Dorr says it is possible that flights to Logan International Airport could be delayed or "stopped," depending on weather conditions.

• Philadelphia, Dorr says, may have been the hardest hit by a wave of cancellations, although the number of cancellations was not immediately available.

The delays can be blamed largely on the unusual amount of snow brought on by the storm. Monthly snow records were broken in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and there were reports of 20 inches of snow or more from Robbinsville, N.C., to Bourne, Mass.

"This is definitely a historic storm for the Mid-Atlantic area," said Bruce Sullivan, senior forecaster for the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, Md.

The 23.2 inches that fell in Philadelphia was the second-highest snowfall on record, after the 30.7 inches in the blizzard of 1996.

The 21.1 inches that blanketed Baltimore beat the old December record, which was 11.5 inches set in 1932.

And the 15 inches at Reagan National Airport set a record for any single day in December. The old record was 11.5 inches in 1932 .

Castelveter said the commercial system faced a two-pronged challenge. He said airlines were racing to get airplanes back in the hardest hit areas, while thousands of travelers attempted to find new accommodations on future flights that already are heavily booked.

"The worst of the weather is over," he said. "We're looking at recovery now."

Homeward bound?

Air Force Airman Robert Goldsberry, currently serving at Andrews Air Force Base, was counting on a quick recovery.

Dressed in military camouflage, the 20-year-old may have been the most properly attired for a drafty night spent inside Reagan National's terminal.

With his Saturday afternoon flight canceled, a bleary-eyed Goldsberry was hoping to catch a late Sunday afternoon flight to Boise for a Christmas with family.

"It wasn't too bad," he said of his stranded Saturday night. If all goes well, he could be home by early today. "It's just good to be going home."

Amir Shaker was looking forward to a return to normalcy for much different reasons.

The manager of Reagan National's TGI Friday's has been working almost non-stop since Friday.

Shaker spent the night at the restaurant Saturday to keep up with dozens of hungry, stranded travelers.

"It will be good to get a break," he said.



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4 cops were shot dead in coffee shop. Criminal targeting cop.Cop killer on the loose.

The victims were identified as Sgt Mark Renninger, 39; Ronald Owens, 37; Tina Griswold, 40; and Greg Richards 42 - all married with children


Staff and customers at the coffee shop were not shot at by the gunman


Police said Maurice Clemmons was one of several people investigators want to talk to but that he could not be called a suspect at this point


Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said the officers had been specifically targeted


A Lakewood, Wash., city employee takes flowers to police headquarters in memory of the four slain officers.


A 37-year-old man with an extensive criminal past was sought for questioning last night after four police officers were fatally shot at a coffee shop as they sat working on their laptops.

One of the officers fought with the gunman and may have wounded him before dying just outside the doorway of the shop, said Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer, who described yesterday morning's shootings as a targeted ambush.

Troyer said Maurice Clemmons of Tacoma was one of several people investigators wanted to talk to. The sheriff's office said Clemmons had an extensive violent criminal history in Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. He also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County with assaulting a police officer and raping a child.

The four officers were with the 100-member police department of Lakewood, which adjoins the unincorporated area of Parkland, where the shootings took place. They were identified as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; Ronald Owens, 37; Tina Griswald, 40; and Greg Richards, 42.

Investigators say they think two of the officers were shot dead while sitting in the Forza Coffee Shop and a third was killed after standing up, Troyer said. The fourth apparently struggled with the gunman, getting off a few shots before collapsing outside the door.

"We believe there was a struggle, a commotion, a fight . . . that he fought the guy all the way out the door," Troyer said.

Troyer said the attack was clearly targeted at the officers, not a robbery gone bad.

"This was more of an execution," he said.

Troyer said the officers were catching up on paperwork at the start of their shift when they were attacked at 8:15 a.m. Pacific time. The coffee shop is in a small retail center.

"There were marked patrol cars outside, and they were all in uniform," Troyer said.

He said the gunman entered and walked up to the counter as though to place an order. A barista saw a gun when the man opened his jacket and she fled out the back door. The man then turned and opened fire on the officers.

Troyer said a couple of hundred officers from the Washington State Patrol and other agencies were at the crime scene, some on their own time.


In search of Maurice Clemmons to assists in the murder shoting of 4 cops.


Explosions were heard today as police searching for the killer of four officers shot dead in a suburban coffee shop in Washington reportedly tried to flush a man out of a house in Seattle.

Officers around the Pacific Northwest had been searching for Maurice Clemmons, 37, whom they say was near the coffee shop on the edge of the McChord Air Force Base when the shootings occurred.

Early this morning, police surrounded the house in Seattle and shone lights on the building as a hostage negotiator called out to Mr Clemmons by name.

"Mr Clemmons, I’d like to get you out of there safely. I can tell you this, we are not going away,” the negotiator said, before sirens began wailing, punctuated by several loud bangs.

“This is one of the toughest decisions you’ll make in your life, but you need to man up.”

The four officers have been named as Sergeant Mark Renninger and officers Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards - all are married and have children. They were killed in a cold-blooded ambush that has shocked the country.

Investigators say they know of no reason why Clemmons or anyone else would have opened fire on the four officers as they sat working on their laptops early yesterday morning, catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts.

“We’re going to be surprised if there is a motive worth mentioning,” said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sherriff’s office who sketched out a scene of controlled and deliberate carnage that spared the employees and other customers at the coffee shop in suburban Parkland.

“He was very versed with the weapon,” Mr Troyer said. “This wasn’t something where the windows were shot up and there bullets sprayed around the place. The bullets hit their targets.”

Mr Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft, the sheriff’s office said. He also recently was arrested and charged in Washington state for assaulting a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

In 1989, Mr Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after Mr Huckabee commuted a 95-year prison sentence.

The attack looks set to have a knock-on effect politically after it emerged that Mr Clemmons had had a lengthy jail term commuted by Mike Huckabee, the then governor of Arkansas, a decade ago.

Mr Huckabee came second to Senator John McCain in the 2008 contest for the Republican presidential nomination and recent polls have made him an early frontrunner for 2012.

But the controversy could deal a fatal blow to his presidential ambitions given past accusations that the conservative pastor was soft on crime. As governor of Arkansas Mr Huckabee helped to grant twice as many pardons and commutations as his three predecessors combined, including Bill Clinton.

Among those benefiting were Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist who was pardoned for a 1975 traffic offence after Mr Huckabee — who plays bass guitar in a band called Capitol Offense — met him at a rock concert.

They also included a castrated rapist called Wayne DuMond, who was released in 1999 after a politically controversial intervention by Mr Huckabee and went on to commit at least one murder. The case featured prominently during the 2008 Republican contest.

Mr Huckabee's "political action committee", dubbed HuckPAC, issued a statement last night clearly trying to distance the former governor from the decision to release Mr Clemmons by spreading the blame for the fact that he was not behind bars.

The statement lamented the "senseless and savage executions" of the four officers and noted early reports that police were searching for a "repeat offender who once lived in Arkansas".

It added: "Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.

"He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, this commutation made him parole eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him."


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