'Catastrophic' storm: LIers share their snow horror stories

Thursday's snow jam will go down as a day that will live in Long Island traffic infamy. 

Islanders struggling through the slushy, sloppy, icy mess declared it the worst commute in years. School buses slid down a snowy hill, windshield wipers stopped working during the height of the storm, and some people said even quick commutes stretched out over hours of stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper nightmares. 

Here are a few of their stories.

Right kid, wrong bus

As she watched school bus after school bus attempt the hill in her Selden neighborhood, only to slide down and sideways and nearly off the road, Samantha Kassl worried about her daughter.

She feared 5-year-old Alexandra was on one of the buses. 

"I felt terrible for whoever was on the buses," she said.

When her daughter's bus didn't show, she called her school, the Bicycle Path PreK/Kindergarten Center in Selden. She said they told her they didn't know where her daughter was, that the kids became the responsibility of the bus company after they left the school.

"That upset me," she said.

She said she called the bus company and the people there told her some of the buses were having trouble in the snow but all the kids were fine.

Her husband, Adam, started walking around the neighborhood looking for their daughter's school bus. He found the bus that Alexandra usually rode, stopped on a road.

"It had no kids on it," Samantha Kassl said. "That made him freak out."

He saw another bus and flagged it down. By chance Alexandra was on it. Her father took her home.

"She came in soaking wet, socks and all," said her mother.

A statement by Middle Country Central School District Superintendent Roberta Gerold said that the bus Alexandra was on was having trouble negotiating the roads, so kids were provided with another ride.

"All parents were called using contact information on file with the district to inform them of this situation," Gerold said. Staff were able to reach the parents of eight of the 10 children on the bus, she said.

That hardly satisfied Samantha Kassl.

"No one called us," she said.

The district is investigating the incident.

'Keep moving'

Robert Cuzzaniti tried to outsmart Thursday's snow-clogged commute.

The 34-year-old usually takes the Northern State Parkway to his home in Smithtown, which generally  takes about an hour, but this time he got a little creative.

"I just zigzagged my way across the Island trying to take shortcuts," Cuzzaniti said. But, he said, "Every turn I took I ran into bumper-to-bumper nonmoving traffic."

Along the way, he said he kept one thought in his mind: Keep going, keep moving.

Cuzzaniti left his Mineola job, where he sells auto body parts, at 4:14 p.m. By the time he got home it was 7:45 p.m., making his commute a total of 3½ hours long.

He found an antidote for this commute from Hades.

"I took a shower and made myself a drink — rum and coke," he said. "I had to calm down."

Out of air

What did Don Roberts get out of Thursday's commute?

Two flat tires.

Roberts, of Freeport, left his Oceanside job as a bus driver and turned onto Atlantic Avenue to find it filled with cars and snow and headaches.

And one more thing.

"I felt this big bump on the driver's side of the car," Roberts, 47, said. 

The rest of the ride home, accomplished at baby-crawl speed, occurred on two flattening tires.

In total, a commute that usually takes him 15 minutes stretched on for 90 minutes. He didn't even realize the tires were going flat, the ride was so slow and snowy.

Friday morning he had to get the SUV towed to a tire place to fix the tires.

"This storm was catastrophic," he said. "If this is a winter preview, Long Island needs to be prepared and vigilant."

Wiped out

Jessica LaFont had already been driving for 90 minutes in the fast-falling snow when her windshield wipers just stopped in their tracks.

Lafont, 35, of Commack, still had another 10 miles of driving, so she decided to risk it.

Moving slowly along the Long Island Expressway, she searched for clear spots on her wet windshield. She could make out the red lights when people stopped in front of her. A few times she pulled over to wipe the glass clean.

The rest of the ride home was nerve-wracking, she said.

"I made it home on hopes and prayers," she said.

By Craig Schneider

craig.schneider@newsday.comScraigo

Craig Schneider is a Long Island native and Stony Brook University alumnus. He joined Newsday as a general assignment reporter in January 2018 after 20 years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.