Winter Storm Jonas: At Least 48 Dead; Roof Collapses Reported; D.C. Remains Shut Down

Sean Breslin
Published: January 26,2016

Residents are well aware of the risks from icy roads and shoveling feet of snow from their sidewalks, but days after Winter Storm Jonas swept through the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, all that wintry precipitation is starting to weigh down on roofs, and several have given way.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, the roof of Shiloh Christian Fellowship Church, built in 1951, completely collapsed on Monday. WJLA.com said there were no injuries.
To the north, the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, Pennsylvania, lost the steel mesh roof over the Birds of Paradise exhibit to the heavy snow Sunday morning, according to the Associated Press. There were no birds in the exhibit at the time, the zoo said.
But amidst all the bad news, there was also good, when a Maryland woman was plucked from her snow-buried car Monday after being trapped for three days. The unidentified woman was conscious and uninjured when crews reached her vehicle in Accokeek, Maryland, on Monday, but officials did not know how she got trapped in the car, according to a separate WJLA.com report.
"It was located on a side street that hadn't been plowed, so the Humvee was able to get to the vehicle and the soldiers were about to get her out," Major Luis Gurri told WJLA.com.
Neighbor Stephen Mackey told the AP that the woman was living out of her car and refused offers of assistance during the storm.
(MORE: Travel Slowly Rebounding after Jonas)

Federal offices in the Washington D.C. area will remain closed on Tuesday, but any emergency and telework-ready employees should adhere to the policies of their agency, the AP reported. Federal offices in the nation's capital have been closed since noon on Friday.
Schools in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. will also remain closed on Tuesday.
At least 48 people died in the storm, a quarter of a million customers lost power and hundreds of crashes have been reported. Travel bans barring non-emergency vehicles from the roads of New York City and Baltimore were lifted early Sunday morning, and mass transit systems that had been partially suspended during the storm were scheduled to run again.
Preliminary estimates say the economic impact of the storm may top $850 million, CBS News reported. Factor in the damage costs left behind, especially along the coast from flooding, and it's almost a certainty that this will be a billion-dollar storm.
Crews are working to reach all of the side streets to clear the snow, but that's a tall task, especially in the big cities. Residents of New York City's outer boroughs were livid when they realized the plows weren't late to clear their streets during the storm – they just weren't coming at all.
“You can’t even call 311 because they don’t even pick up the phone now,” Frank Libal, a resident of the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, told CBS New York. “Even if they made one pass yesterday, this would have never gotten to the way it is now. This is terrible.”
(MORE: Another Snowmaker Ahead This Week?)
In Queens, a borough that the New York Post said was "basically forgotten during Winter Storm Jonas," Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted they failed to do enough to clear the 34 inches of snow off the roads, stranding hundreds of thousands.
“If I’m living in the neighborhoods I mentioned — like the streets I saw in Sunnyside, Woodside — I’m not going to be happy this morning, I’m not going to be satisfied," de Blasio told the Post.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, a house burned to the ground Sunday along an unplowed road, according to the Washington Post. Fire crews had to stretch the fire hose more than 800 feet to get to the house, fire and rescue service spokesperson Laura Rinehart told the Post. All occupants inside the home survived the blaze.

The Maryland Emergency Management Agency asked residents to avoid non-essential travel on Monday so they could continue to clear the roads, WBAL.com reported.
But even as airlines in the affected East Coast cities resumed service Monday, air travel was still expected to be slower than usual on Tuesday. At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, more than 200 flights were canceled Tuesday morning.
(MORE: Where Winter Storm Jonas Ranks in History)
The massive snowstorm brought both the nation's capital and its largest city to a stop, dumping as much as 3 feet of snow and stranding tens of thousands of travelers.
In New York City, Jonas dropped 26.8 inches of snow in Central Park, the second-highest total for any storm since 1869. The snowfall narrowly missed tying the record of 26.9 inches set in February 2006. The snow finally stopped falling in New York City around 10 p.m. Saturday night, though authorities insisted people stay indoors and off the streets as crews plowed deserted roads and police set up checkpoints to catch violators of the travel ban.
The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with areas of Washington surpassing 30 inches. The heaviest unofficial report was in a rural area of West Virginia, not far from Harpers Ferry, with 40 inches.Flurries even reached North Florida.
"This is kind of a top-10 snowstorm," said weather service winter storm expert Paul Kocin, who co-wrote a two-volume textbook on blizzards.
The usually bustling New York City looked more like a ghost town over the weekend. With Broadway shows dark, thin crowds shuffled through a different kind of Great White Way, the nickname for a section of the theater district. And Bruce Springsteen canceled Sunday's scheduled show at Madison Square Garden.
The snow was whipped into a maelstrom by winds that reached 75 mph at Dewey Beach, Delaware, and Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, according to the National Weather Service. From Virginia to New York, sustained winds topped 30 mph and gusted to around 50 mph. And if that weren't enough, the storm also had bursts of thunder and lightning.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.