Sussex digs out of massive winter storm

Cindy Truitt shoveled out the driveway and her car twice after a storm dumped nearly 20 inches of snow Sunday and Monday at the home she shares with her mother in Tru Vale Acres east of Route 1 near Rehoboth Beach.

Truitt was in the house when a plow truck passed Tuesday, pushing large chunks of snow across the driveway and leaving snow otherwise untouched along their side of Third Street.

She was frustrated.

“I can't go out there and get rid of all those big boulders that they got out and shovel the whole side of the road,” she said Feb. 25. “I'm sore from two days of shoveling.”

Truitt was planning to drive her mother, Geraldine Padgett, 89, to a doctor appointment Feb. 26. Padgett has been treated for stage 4 cancer since March and relies on supplemental oxygen.

“We keep praying that the Lord heals her,” Truitt said.

With the help of a neighbor, Truitt cleared a path through the deep snow to the road Wednesday afternoon.

Most places in Sussex County fell just short of the technical definition of a blizzard, said Lee Robertson, a National Weather Service meteorologist. The criteria are sustained winds of at least 35 mph for at least three hours, with heavy snow and visibility of a quarter mile or less.

Snowfall totals were recorded at 21 inches in Long Neck, 19.3 inches in Bethel, 19 inches four miles north of Georgetown and in Seaford, 18.5 in Selbyville, 18 in Lewes and Milton, 17 in Millsboro and 9.7 in Dagsboro, according to the National Weather Service.

Highest recorded wind gusts were 62 mph in Dewey Beach, 58 mph in Lewes and 46 mph at the Indian River Inlet.

While the initial response to the storm that battered Sussex County had ended by midweek, work to clear roads, restore power and remove trees and branches continued through the week.

The National Guard was sent and Delaware Department of Transportation and electric utility crews came down from northern Delaware to help. Fire departments were busy responding to many calls for assistance.

Most roads in Sussex County were cleared by Wednesday morning, said DelDOT Director of Community Relations Charles “C.R.” McLeod in an email. 

“Primary issue at this point is clearing trees and ongoing utility repairs,” McLeod said. “We had roughly 400 locations in Sussex with downed trees, wires or both through this storm event.”

“We still have about 150 locations as of [Feb. 25] that need to be addressed, and we have been receiving assistance from DNREC, Division of Agriculture, the National Guard, utilities and DelDOT crews from the northern part of the state in this effort to clear trees and get power restored,” he added.

An update was not immediately Thursday as of press time. Some people involved in the storm response likened it to the aftermath of a hurricane, but in some ways worse. 

“Its an equivalent response, but with ice and snow,” said Theresa Young, executive director of the American Red Cross’s Delmarva Chapter.

“It’s like a winter hurricane,” said Ben Wiley, administrative assistant of Save a Tree/Sussex Tree. “This is one of the biggest we’ve had in years. Wind and ice and the weight of snow broke limbs and took down wires. It’s hazardous out there.”

As snow swirled and temperatures dropped below freezing, the immediate crisis for many Feb. 22-23 was finding a safe place to stay. With roads impassable and a state driving ban in place, getting displaced people to shelters and volunteers there to help them was difficult.

County and state emergency management agencies and the Delmarva Chapter of the American Red Cross opened an emergency shelter at Sussex Central Middle School in Georgetown. It housed and fed more than 20 people, Young said. Fewer than 10 people stayed at a temporary Kent County shelter. Both shelters closed Tuesday.

Young said 17 volunteers staffed the Sussex County shelter. It was difficult getting them to the site, and four volunteers were picked up at their homes by National Guard members and transported in a Humvee.

Two Code Purple at the Cape overnight homeless shelters, one for men and one for women, were at capacity of 14 people each Feb. 23-24, said site director Mike Agnew.

During that time, shelters were open 24 hours, since day programs run by the Rehoboth Community Resource Center were shut down by the storm.

Code Purple also received an emergency grant from the Delaware State Housing Authority to house 16 homeless people in motels to ride out the storm, said Agnew, who delivered two meals to them daily. The grant was approved Sunday afternoon, so organizers rushed to arrange housing and transport people to motels, he said. 

Code Purple’s bus was dug out of the snow by Tuesday afternoon and was to be put back in service Wednesday to take homeless people to the Community Resource Center, Agnew said.

Pallet Village, a group of 40 small residences in Georgetown for people who previously lived outdoors, opened its community building to house 40 more homeless people, said Judson Malone, the group’s executive director.

“We’ve been feeding them, keeping them warm,” Malone said. “People have been sleeping on cots and mattresses.”

They arrived Sunday and the temporary shelter was closed Wednesday when warmer weather arrived, he said.

Save a Tree/Sussex Tree was responding to hundreds of calls for downed trees and limbs, Wiley said. Work was hampered as its office was without power and internet service immediately after the storm.

“A lot of trees are down on the roads, electricity is out,” Wiley said. “It’s pretty bad. We had calls up and down the coast, from Kent County to Ocean City.”

Wiley said crews would probably work for weeks to come, and more calls for service are expected as owners of seasonal homes discover problems later.

The Brandywine Valley SPCA’s Animal Rescue Center on Shingle Point Road in Georgetown and its Georgetown campus on Route 113 were damaged and without power during and after the storm.

The SPCA put out an urgent call for people to temporarily foster dogs from the Animal Rescue Center, said Sara Smith, senior director of marketing & communications for the organization.

“We are so grateful to the quick work of the community to help us send 22 dogs into foster from our Animal Rescue Center, where we were without power for an extended time,” Smith said in a Feb. 25 news release.

Power had been restored and both campuses reopened Wednesday, but a handful of dogs were yet to be boarded elsewhere.

The SPCA is in need of towels and blankets, which can be dropped off at its Georgetown locations.

Work was beginning to remove downed trees, fix damage to fences and outdoor structures in outdoor areas, Smith said. There are plans to buy generators to lessen the effect of future storms. The SPCA was asking for donations to help defray what was expected to be expensive repairs and improvements.

As of Feb. 26, the number of Delmarva Electric Cooperative power outages had dwindled to 228 customers, down from a high of 66,000 after the storm. The cooperative serves 122,000 mostly rural homes and businesses in Sussex and Kent counties.

Delmarva Power brought in an additional 400 workers to help restore power. By Wednesday, service was restored to 96% of affected customers. The company has a total of 561,500 electric customers in Delaware and Maryland.

The remaining outages by midday Thursday included 11 customers in Sussex County. Power was expected to be restored to the last of them by the end of the day.