It’s small consolation for sure, especially for those planning to do something besides shovel snow for the holiday, but it could have been worse. As white Christmases go, the blizzard of 20 aught 6 likely will go down in history as a nuisance, particularly for airline reservations agents and snowplow operators.
It’s not expected to shut down the city for a week.
That distinction goes to the infamous Christmas Eve storm of 1982, which buried Denver in up to 29 inches of snow and pretty much put the career of Mayor Bill McNichols into a deep coma.
McNichols took the blame for the city’s inability to clear streets more than a week later. It was bad.
How bad?
Three days after the storm, then Denver Post reporter Neil Westergaard reported that it took two hours to drive the mile-long road between Quebec Street and the old Stapleton airport terminal.
At least five people died, including a man who had a fatal heart attack after shoveling snow, a cross-country skier buried in an avalanche near Montezuma and an elderly man who was walking home from a friend’s house a few blocks away, broke his leg and died of exposure. He had left his trailer to borrow a kerosene heater.
It was so bad that at least one traveler, John Grissom from Dallas, suggested the city needed a new airport.
It would be years before anybody paid attention to him.
The Denver Office of Emergency Preparedness was triaging hundreds of calls for help, delivering food, insulin and medications to residents stranded in their homes. The city was mobilizing the few four-wheel-drive vehicles available to deliver people to kidney dialysis and hospital emergency rooms.
One woman called the office asking for an urgent delivery of birth control pills.
Her request was denied.
Colorado ski resorts – never known for understatement – called the blizzard “a financial disaster.” Vacationers unable to reach the high country left the lodging industry with no-shows all over the state. Aspen’s Holiday Inn, which charged the premium rate of $135 a night (!) during the holidays instead of the usual $45 a night in 1982, reported a 25 percent vacancy rate. An estimated $3 million in revenue to the ski industry was lost despite the awesome powder.
Somehow, it recovered.
Retailers, which included two downtown department stores and the once-fabulous Southglenn Mall, complained that they’d missed two of the biggest shopping days of the year – Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas.
They, too, recovered, if only temporarily.
Supermarkets reported shortages of perishables, such as bread, produce, eggs, milk and the essentials: chips and beer.
The Montbello neighborhood, described then as “a remote square of developed flat prairie in northeast Denver,” was among the last parts of the city to see any sign of snowplows. The National Guard was mobilized to deliver residents in need of emergency medical care via helicopter 3 1/2 days after the storm hit.
Police patrol cars were useless. Officers were driven around Montbello by volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles.
The holiday spirit – in all its various manifestations, both generous and avaricious – flourished throughout the storm.
Stories of Coloradans taking in strangers, delivering blankets and warm clothes to homeless shelters, feeding stranded people in church shelters and working days on end without a break at hospitals and nursing homes were reassuringly commonplace.
Among the most egregious cases of runaway opportunism was the story of the city employee who used city equipment to plow parking lots for downtown businesses – at a price – when he was supposed to be clearing streets.
He was suspended.
And when the snow was gone but not forgotten in the spring, Federico Peña resoundingly defeated Mayor Bill McNichols at the polls.
In a snowslide.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
