The load strained the equipment so that the MBTA had to curtail commuter rail service by 25 percent for two months. The MBTA carried 50 percent more riders than it did on an ordinary day. On the Monday after the storm, the driving ban was still in effect. In Massachusetts, the MBTA actually performed well. He had to field a phone call from a woman complaining she didn’t get her mail. One letter carrier got stranded in Providence, so he slept on sacks at the post office for two nights. The postal service couldn’t deliver the mail for the first time since the Great 1938 Hurricane. One of many homes damaged by the 1978 blizzard. For several days they ate hot dogs, slept in the bleachers and, as Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessey pointed out, used ‘combs and deodorant left behind by Terry O’Reilly and Wayne Cashman.’ Hockey fans in Boston who came to watch the Beanpot college tournament got stranded at Boston Garden. In Dedham, Mass., 300 stranded motorists ate popcorn and watched movies at the Showcase Cinema just off the highway. Bartholomew’s Church in Needham, Mass., which sheltered 2,000. Many people ended up trapped in their workplaces, living off vending machine food during the 1978 blizzard. “I am pleading with Winthrop Shore Drive residents to evacuate their homes!” he said, between calls from constituents complaining about discrimination enforcement and civil service exams. As panic set in, Dukakis began to direct the emergency response on the Brudnoy show. He heard from Revere residents on the second-floor of their houses wondering whether they’d survive. He happened to be on a radio call-in show with David Brudnoy on the evening of February 6. Michael Dukakis, on the other hand, was everywhere during the 1978 blizzard - in his cardigan sweater. He won little sympathy by complaining about the cold weather in Florida and that he ‘didn’t even swim in the pool.’ Women standing on top of a snowbank in Boston.īoston Mayor Kevin White could only make his way home slowly from Palm Beach. Ella Grasso abandoned her car on the highway and walked to the Hartford Armory.
In New England’s cities, the 1978 blizzard stranded thousands more cars that took days to dig out. Fourteen people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in their snowbound vehicles. Snowdrifts trapped 3,000 cars and 500 trucks along eight miles of Rte.
Thousands of cars had to be abandoned on the highways. People left school and work early so they could get home, but the snow fell so fast that staying put would have been safer. Amy and a Scituate neighbor, Edward Hart, drowned during the rescue attempt. A giant wave ripped five-year-old Amy Lanzikas from her mother’s arms while they were being rescued in a firefighters’ skiff. Joseph Conley returned to her home in Scituate after the storm, the tide surge demolished everything but the toilet. The South Shore and Revere, Mass., took the hardest hits from the flood tides and towering waves. One flood tide ran into the next with four successive flood tides, it seemed the tide never went out.
In Massachusetts, the flood destroyed 2,000 homes between Marblehead and Plymouth and damaged another 10,000. The sun and moon aligned to cause spring high tides that produced record floods. Only CBS’s Harvey Leonard seemed to have a clue: “We are going to get hit hard.” Weather forecasters knew something was coming, they just didn’t know what. In Massachusetts, a massive effort to clear Logan’s runway allowed 200 troops from Ft. In Connecticut, 547 National Guardsmen cleared roads and returned people to their homes – if they still had homes.
From Provincetown to Eastern Maine, the northeasterly winds flooded the coast. Wind speeds reached 79 mph at Logan Airport, 92 mph at Chatham Weather Station on Cape Cod, and unofficial reports said wind gusts exceeded 100 mph. The snow turned to rain on Cape Cod, but the wind wreaked plenty of havoc. In central and southern New England, the snowfall turned to ice at night, leaving everything covered with ice. The 1978 blizzard killed about 100 people and injured about 4,500. A residential street after the 1978 blizzard in Woonsocket, R.I.
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