Long Islanders' storm stories

The snow accumulation that came with the storm was a welcome sight to some day laborers, who have been competing for scarce construction work during the winter.

While other people may have had snow days, the storm presented an opportunity to work.

Many of those men walked the side streets of Huntington Station, shovel in hand, ready to clean driveways.

"It beats spending all these days inside staring at walls," Alfredo Grijalva, 23, an immigrant from Guatemala said in Spanish. "There's plenty of work mowing lawns and cutting trees in the summer, but almost nothing to do now."

Grijalva and his work partner, Osvaldo Ramirez, a 30-year-old Salvadoran immigrant, charge about $30 per driveway. They expected to clean about six driveways during this snowstorm.

"We find more work this way than standing on the corner," Ramirez said.

- VÍCTOR MANUEL RAMOS

As the sun broke through the clouds at about 10:30 a.m., the Coram Home Depot was virtually deserted of customers. The few people coming in were either looking for shovels, which were sold out last night, or salt, or scraper parts for their snowblowers. Among that last category was Raphael Soto, a landscaper from Rocky Point, who drove in with his landlord Tony Parisi. The two of them decided to spend the day snowplowing driveways to capitalize on the snowfall. As they cleared the first driveway at Parisi's house, the snowblower broke down in the middle so they went to Home Depot to find a replacement. Parisi said if they can get the part, "we'll do as many driveways as we can. There should be plenty of work and we'll work all day and all night if we can." Soto said, "We'll start in Suffolk County and then move into Nassau."

- BILL BLEYER

Telecommuting during a snowstorm is not an option for Nick D'Amico.

Nor is calling in sick.

D'Amico, president of Shore Power Snow Plowing in Manorville, said that despite having the flu, he hit the road at 2 a.m. Wednesday to plow the homes and businesses of his customers. "You don't get a sick day when it snows," he said.

"So far, so good," he said by cell phone Wednesday morning from Westhampton, where he said after about a foot of snow, it appeared to be tapering off.

Compared to the blizzard at the end of December, he said visibility was better.

"The wind was a little bit less," he said. There weren't as many abandoned vehicles blocking the sides of the roads, he said. "It seemed like the roads were pretty clear last night. People have been staying inside, which was better."

Paul Aponte, owner of P. Aponte Landscape and Design Inc. in Islandia, said he also started at 2 a.m. removing snow from commercial properties from Wyandanch to Patchogue. "There wasn't as much blowing snow and as much drifting" as the December blizzard, he said.

Also, most of his customers were closed Wednesday, giving crews more room and time to get the parking lots ready for Thursday morning. After a break in the afternoon, he said, they'll go out again in the evening to try to clear out more parking spots.

"We still have a lot more piles," he said Wednesday morning.

- EMI ENDO

Wearing a red ski jacket and ski cap, Susan McCarthy of Manhattan took a peaceful stroll in Blydenburgh County Park in Hauppauge with her two Jack Russell terriers, Buster and Chloe. McCarthy, who was visiting Suffolk County to take care of a granddaughter, said she'd seen three cars go by but nobody on foot, snowshoe or ski.

"I have the park to myself," she said. "It feels marvelous."

- BILL BLEYER

Rich Valdez was among scattered passengers waiting for the next westbound train from Huntington Station to Penn Station around 11 a.m. An overhead announcement reported delays of 25 minutes.

Valdez, an IT supervisor at the New York Law School in Manhattan, was one of the many souls to find out Tuesday that all city schools would open.

He was about three hours late after spending more than an hour digging his cars out of the snow.

"I think Bloomberg wants to make a statement that the city is open for business and that means I've got to go to work," said Valdez, 47 of Huntington. "Everyone else is closed but us."

Jim Rojas, 44, of Melville, also found out that the bank he works at in Manhattan was open. He was late but determined to get there. "Hey, this is what we do," Rojas said. "We dig out. We go to work."

- VÍCTOR MANUEL RAMOS

In Miller Place, where the snow was 18 inches high in some places, and higher in the drifts, many stores along Miller Place Road and Route 25A were closed as of 9:30 a.m., a time when the roads are typically jammed with cars.

At the 7-Eleven on the corner, which stayed open all night, the traffic was much slower than usual, the employees said. Most of the customers were the tow truck drivers buying coffee to keep themselves awake after a night of plowing.

"We started at three a.m. and will go until it stops tonight," said Joe Militello, who was plowing parking lots in the area with his partner Cesar Flores. "We're having a hard time now. You usually can't push more than a foot at a time."

Marshall's department store was open for business, but there were no customers at 9:30 a.m. The nearby Rite-Aid was closed because the workers couldn't get in, said the manager, who was shoveling outside the store. The large Stop & Shop was open for business, too.

At the Hess station, where cars are usually lined up for gas in the morning, there were a few cars filling up. Chris Connor, 47, of Mount Sinai, was among those drivers. He said it took him two hours to dig out with the use of a snowblower. He was on his way into work to the insurance company he owns, he said.

"I'm just going to be careful," he said of the trip into work.

The gas station was open all night, said employee Lavaughn Samuel, who just started there four days ago. People have been coming in for coffee and energy drinks, mostly the plowers, he said. One lady got stuck at the pump at about 2 a.m., he said, and an employee dug her out.

- STACEY ALTHERR

Nick Pisculli and George Karampelas, part of a team from AAA Maintenance of Bay Shore contracted by the Roosevelt Field shopping mall to clear mall parking lots and outer roadways leading to the mall.

They said eight payloaders cleared the parking lot. And four big 10-wheeler dump trucks did the outer roads. "We started 11 last night," Pisculli said. The main parking lot of the mall was plowed down to pavement when just before 11 a.m. They had a problem with the payloader, Pisculli said, when a hydraulic line that directs steering had blown.

- OLIVIA WINSLOW

Hector Cortez, 25, and Jose Fegardo, 19, both of Freeport, were waiting for an eastbound train at the Freeport train station shortly before 10 a.m. Both said they had gotten an unexpected day off from their jobs at a Massapequa restaurant.

Cortez said they had taken an 8:50 a.m. train to Massapequa and then turned around and came back to Freeport after finding the restaurant closed. As a PA system announced 10 to 15 minute delays due to weather, Cortez said they were headed to Merrick to shop. Cortez said of the weather: "We like it." Fegardo just smiled.

They were only two of three people on the platform. A third, Chris Johnson, a NYC corrections officer, was waiting for a train to take him to Jamaica where a co-worker will pick him up.

"You have to do what you have to do," Johnson said. "At least they're running," he said of the trains.

- OLIVIA WINSLOW

Ray Northern, 27, of Westbury, is a doctoral student at NYIT studying physical therapy.

Wednesday morning, he was shoveling snow and clearing his car to get to work later in the day.

He estimated that it would take him about 20 minutes to dig his car out of the snow around his Oldsmobile.

The catch: He said this storm was the first time he had to shovel snow since moving to New York from his hometown of Albany, Ga., three years ago.

He said in the past, he's parked his car in a garage in order to shield it from the weather.

"I wasn't looking forward to shoveling snow but this isn't bad," he said. "I'm not a fan of snow. I don't like winter."

Zaida Colon, 40, of Westbury, was also digging her car out of the snow Wednesday morning. Colon, who works at a health insurance provider, said her office is opening two hours later than usual because of the snow.

"I wish I was in Florida," said Colon, a New York native, as she wiped snow from her car's front window. "I just don't like snow . . . hen they said another nor'easter, I cursed."

Colon however said she was pleasantly surprised that this storm brought less snow than others. "It's not as bad as the first one," she said adding quickly, "I still hate the snow."

- YAMICHE ALCINDOR

A caretaker says a torrential rain pummeled the Montauk Lighthouse on eastern Long Island before snow and gusting winds rushed in at dawn.

Marge Winski says the rain gave way to "a whiteout."

Winski delayed going to her other job, at the village post office, because the 5-mile drive was "remote and hilly."

Her 150-pound Newfoundland, Maggie Thunderpaws, was unfazed by the storm. The worse the weather, the better Maggie likes it.

Winski, 53, says Maggie looked like a polar bear when she returned from a frolic outside.

The caretaker says the post-Christmas blizzard was much worse. It shook the lighthouse and ripped out a bench cemented to the ground.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The parking lot of the Ridge post office was still being plowed at 10 a.m. and nobody had gotten to the big drift by the front door.

Steve Abbey, a postal clerk from Miller Place, said they managed to open on time at 9 a.m., and all 18 employees got in. The staff beat the mail, however.

The mail delivery from the regional center in Melville was delayed and hasn't been in yet. Abbey's normal commute is eight minutes and Wednesday it took 30 minutes. He has front-wheel drive and he was able to make pretty good time.

Business was slow, he said, with only one customer in the first hour. Abbey said of the employees, "Everybody got here but maybe it took a little bit longer."

- BILL BLEYER

Jose Castro watched as his son, Edwin, worked to get their Dodge Caravan out of a rut in their driveway on Nassau Road in Freeport. Jose had to get to the hospital for his dialysis treatment.

"It's very bad," Jose said of the snow, before his son managed to get the Caravan out of the rut and they went on their way.

- OLIVIA WINSLOW

The snowfall presented a real logistical challenge for workers at Calverton National Cemetery, where nine of 17 scheduled funerals Wednesday were canceled because of the weather.

"We have a dedicated staff that comes out no matter what the weather," assistant director Larry Williams said. More than half the staff were already in and others are on the way, he said.

"It's possible that we might do burials because we never close and we're always here," Williams said. The cemetery roads have been plowed, and if the burial happens they plow a path to the grave site and plow around the grave site for the ceremony."

Cemetery director Mike Picerno said even if they don't have burials Wednesday, "we'll be opening graves today for burial tomorrow." The cemetery wound up doing at least three burials.

Crews dig holes between 5 to 7 feet deep for burials, and the first 6 inches of ground were frozen at this point, he said. Jackhammers and trench cutting machines cut through the frozen layer, then a backhoe finishes the job.

Two employees clearing snow in front of the cemetery's administration building said the snowfall made for an interesting day at work. "It's a typical day, eight hours," said stone setter Tom Morris of Wading River. "But it breaks the routine a bit. But you have to play catch up a little" to make up for the delayed burials, he said.

Grounds worker Jim Frank of Bohemia said he liked the snowfall because "it mixes it up. It's a lot of routine usually. I got to talk to and work with different people."

Cemetery representative Dean Phillippe said his normal commute from his home in East Hampton typically takes under an hour - Wednesday, it took an hour and a half.

"It wasn't good," he said of his commute. He could tell the roads were plowed but still had a lot of snow. To make things worse, he lives on a private road and "they don't plow it. Even worse, they plow you in when they plow along the main road." Luckily Phillippe drives a Jeep which could clear the snow. Still, he said he had sympathy for snow plowers because he used to do that for the Suffolk County parks department.

Phillippe said the worst road conditions were to be found on the farm roads around Riverhead. "When you come by the fields and it's drifting off and into the roads, it's very difficult," he said.

- BILL BLEYER

At the 7-Eleven store on Route 58 in Riverhead, the overnight sales clerk, Haci Balaban, said sales were slow. Overnight, he had maybe 10 customers.

At 7 a.m., the store was empty. Normally at that time, there would be five people on one line and several others filling coffee cups or making small purchases, he said.

"Nobody's going to work," he said. "It's slow."

Down the road, a quarter-mile west, Phil McCoy, manager of the AutoZone store, was preparing to open. The store's lot needed to be plowed, he said. He said his store never closes because of bad weather.

"I have to make sure the store is open, so the plowers can get the parts they need to get back on the road if something breaks," McCoy said. "The roads are horrendous."

- BILL BLEYER

Mike Washington, a Riverhead letter carrier who lives in Huntington, left his house at 5 a.m. so he could try to start his 7:30 a.m. route on time. On the way to work, he picked up colleague Dawn Curley in Centereach.

Washington has an SUV without four-wheel drive. They took the Long Island Expressway to Route 58 until they stopped for coffee. As they turned right into the parking lot into the 7-Eleven, the vehicle got stuck in a snowbank.

"I've been on the road since 5 [a.m.]," Washington said. "It's horrible, horrible. We got stuck a couple of times before the coffee break."

Curley said the conditions got worse as soon as the two crossed Exit 68 on the LIE.

With the help of the store manager and a passerby, the vehicle was freed from the snow bank, and the two went on their way to work.

- BILL BLEYER

At LaGuardia Airport, a dozen travelers sat in a quiet food court as front loaders piled snow outside. Plows raced up and down the runways.

Erik Flores, 20, a student from Honduras who visited cousins in Brentwood for the holidays, stared, bleary-eyed, at the departure and arrival screens.

Nearly all arriving flights and most departing flights - including his own on American Airlines - were canceled.

"They told me that probably today there are no flights but if I want to stay and watch the screen..." Flores said. "I'm frustrated. Classes already started on Monday. "

- JENNIFER MALONEY