ago--
ago-- You
ago-- You likely were stuck inside-- watching crazy
amounts of snow blanket the
area..
What became the very memorable
blizzard of
'78 ...still has people talking
42 years later. .
Tonight-- Lou Hebert gives us a
look back
at the storm that brought the
glass city
to a hault.
It happened quickly. A light
rain turned to snow A light wind turned into what
seemed like a white hurricane
The mercury
drops from the mid 30's to
single digits
And on that dawn of January
26th,
26th, Weather history was being made descending on Northwest Ohio
like an
unwelcome visitor as two very
low pressure
systems collided over Ohio
becoming a
dangerous storm, the worst in
history. At
Toledo's Emergency Center the
scramble
was on as everybody was trying
to
to figure
to figure out, how to direct the city snow plows. where they were or if they had
gotten stuck
in the snow clogged streets or
were still
moving. Reporter Voice: Two
residents
say that a snow plow tried to
tackle this
street last niht but still
didn't work. "He went about 75
feet and he stopped cold. Hit a
couple of mounds of ice and that
was it.
" I said this here is thre wrong
equipment,
what tyou need here is an end
loader to haul
this stuff out of here." Lou
Track " With all of
the State national guard fully
deployed
around the state, President
Carter
ordered the U.S. Army ..to come
in with
heavy equipment and operators.
Lou
Lou track: Wood Counthy was reported to be the hardest hit with winds
that
that
pummeled
pummeled the landscape leaving behind drifts that were as high as house and
imprisoned resident inside for
days.
Woman " The wind knocked the
front door
down and we had three to four
inches of
snow inside the house. We were
there
without food or water or
electricity from
Thursday morning to Saturday
when they
came and got us." Dispatcher:
"Identify
please. This is super
mud...fades
Lou Track: In many of the rural
areas around
Toledo, things were shaky for
days... nats
truck Dispatch. "Don't forget to
get bundled
up and if you have food for your
animals
bring that along too Lou Track:
Throughout
the Toledo area it seed that
everybody
was pitching in to help
"The city of Toledo says
volunteers who are leding a hand
will
will be
will be be covered for any liability....now Joe...Joe talks about
not going outside" Lou Track:
The death toll
from the storm was climbing.
Seven by
Sunday in Northwest Ohio,
makeshift blood
banks were being set up to
handle the
heavy demand, and Toledo Edison
was
dispatching crews throughout the
area to
handle the 30,000 homes without
power.
Stranded travelers were waiting
patiently
at bus station, hotels, and
bars..
bars.. Jim Proctor WTOL reporter: "Looks like you are having apretty good time, does
your wife
know you are out here boozing it
up while
she's at home lonely? yeah, well
she's
probably figure I'm out here
having a good
time, she's no fool." Lou track:
Many people were not having a
good
good time, Snow can be fun, but 13 inches that smothered the city was making
life
miserable for many. Eventually
the snow
stopped falling, the streets got
plowed and
even Mayor Degood who was
stranded on
East Coast got back to Toledo.
The worst was
over. But 40 years later when
the wind
starts to howl, you can still
feel the sting and
know that over the last 40
winters there's never been a
rival to the Great Blizzard of
1978..
1978.. Lou Hebert, wtol 11
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