Phila. region struggles to dig out from under

Mayor Nutter proclaimed it Dig-out Day - an upbeat way of describing what to others across the Philadelphia region was a cold stretch of aching backs, bent shovels, fallen trees, and shortened tempers.

The third major storm of the season made the news litany of blocked highways, airport closings, and rail delays sound like a broken record. But the fresh snow was all too real yesterday for the people who had to move it.

"I'd like to get out of here," said Ed Fogerty of Chestnut Hill - and he didn't mean to Florida.

He simply meant, as he carried the umpteenth shovel of heavy snow across the street to dump it, that he wanted to free his car. When the plow came down his street, it buried the parked cars, including his red Honda Civic.

In Jenkintown, Eric Victor got a nasty surprise when his snowblower became tangled with wire in a drift. He pulled on the snowblower to free it, only to see sparks and smoke shoot from a spot 50 yards away - and the end of the wire dangling from a tree.

The line in his snowblower turned out to be connected to a fallen streetlight.

Firefighters arrived and cordoned off the area. No one was hurt.

"You were very lucky," Victor's wife, Barbara, told him.

The storm dropped 15.8 inches as measured at Philadelphia International Airport. That was on top of the 28.5 inches that fell last week.

Yesterday, as people dug and shoveled and pushed and heaved and ho'ed, they wondered:

Where is all this stuff going to go?

"There's no room left at the inn," said Abington Township Public Works Director Ed Micciolo, who worried where his crews would put the next storm's snow.

AccuWeather.com predicted that another storm may roll into the region between late Sunday and early Tuesday. It also said the freezing of melted snow and slush at night would create dangers for drivers and pedestrians for days.

Major highways reopened in Philadelphia yesterday, but many drivers had trouble navigating smaller streets to get to them. Airport officials expected most operations to return to normal this morning.

SEPTA officials expected to restore service to more train and bus lines today, but ice in the morning could affect some routes. Also, the R6 Cynwyd line and part of the R2 Wilmington line could remain suspended because of track-sharing issues with Amtrak.

In the city, morning rush-hour traffic gave way to a parade of plows and front-end loaders. The business uniform of the day was no longer a suit and wingtips, but jeans and snow boots.

Nutter made two neighborhood appearances to praise workers' and residents' efforts to cope with the back-to-back storms that broke the city record for the season.

"The city is getting back in shape," Nutter said in West Philadelphia.

He promised that 625 workers operating 510 pieces of machinery would work through the weekend to reach "big streets, little streets, and any other street we can get our hands on."

Late yesterday, the mayor ended the city's snow emergency and announced that all courts, offices, and facilities would be open today.

Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson was asked where the city would put all that snow. Leave it in mounds? Haul it away? Dump it in the river?

"We're going to take some of that down to the Navy Yard," she said. "We will not dump in the river. There are environmental concerns with placing snow in the river. The snow accumulates pollutants and salt, and dumping it in the river would be a very extreme measure."

At the Italian Market, merchants passed the hat to hire a plow service to ensure that business could be done during Valentine's Day weekend.

"The city did what they could. They made a couple of passes," said Dave Brown, manager of Talluto's Pasta and a leader in the Ninth Street Business Association. "We need to clear this out and let people know we are open for business. All the parking lots in the area have been plowed."

Yesterday, people saw two things it seemed they might never see again: blue sky and blacktop.

If the sun cheered grown-ups, the snow cheered children, many of them prepared for what has become a five- or six-day weekend. All Philadelphia public and parochial schools remain closed today.

Gov. Rendell had two words when asked his thoughts on the chance of more snow: "Good grief."

The state's biggest storm problems are in the Philadelphia region, where several thousand homes were still without power; some could remain so until Sunday.

In a conference call with reporters, Rendell said Peco Energy Co. had brought in crews from other states to help respond to outages. Meanwhile, 400 national guardsmen are conducting "presence patrols" in humvees, entering neighborhoods statewide made impassable by snow to distribute food, water, and blankets, and to take sick people to hospitals.

The storm claimed at least eight lives in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including a 65-year-old man in Kensington and a 66-year-old man in the Northeast who suffered heart attacks while shoveling snow.

In Riverside, 51-year-old James Boles died when an awning collapsed on him as he shoveled snow off a deck.

In New Jersey, county and municipal officials were adding up the cost of two storms so they could apply for federal aid to replenish snow-removal budgets. The accounting went on even as exhausted public works crews continued clearing streets, repairing power lines, and removing hundreds of trees toppled by high winds and heavy snow.

In Cherry Hill, officials received more than 100 reports of downed trees blocking roads. Last night, Camden police prepared to open their administration building as a temporary homeless shelter for the second day.

Camden County public works crews cleared packed snow from roads with help from salt and sun. In Burlington County, most of the 4,000 residents who lost power Wednesday had it restored yesterday. Downed trees and wires were still being removed.

The Pennsylvania suburbs were recovering, too. Abington officials were clearing fallen trees in the older, eastern section of the township.

Apparently, temperatures in the mid-30s weren't helping to cool tempers, at least where parking spots were concerned.

Paula Garofalo of South Philadelphia came home from a meeting Tuesday night and couldn't find a place to park. She said she had noticed a spot near Ninth and Moyamensing that had been cleared of snow and marked with two stools.

She tossed the stools aside and pulled her car into the spot, only to be confronted by an irate young woman who insisted the space was "her spot."

"I said, 'What you did was illegal,' " said Garofalo, a security guard for Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C. "It's a public street."

In Philadelphia neighborhoods there's a tradition of protecting cleared parking spaces with furniture or highway cones.

"Look, if you spent two hours digging your car out," Nutter said yesterday, "ultimately that has to be something respected by the community."

Philadelphia police spokesman Ray Evers said: "Officially, you cannot put a chair, milk crate, your grandmother . . . officially, it's not your spot, and you can't save it, officially."

The translation of officially? We're not enforcing it unless a fight breaks out.

Yesterday, the sun helped melt snow, if not moods.

City crews continued to battle the product of a complex storm that featured freezing rain atop a layer of packed snow.

Tolson was asked whether businesses would be able to resume normal operations this morning.

"It certainly won't be normal," she said. "We'll still be working. But our hope is to make conditions such that the roads are passable, all the main arteries are clear, and commerce can be back in business."