Toledo, Ohio – With snow blowing over slippery roads in this frigid city, everyone but emergency workers was ordered to stay off the roads for several hours Wednesday. So what was Derrick Jones doing out there, delivering red roses and heart-shaped balloons? On this Valentine’s Day, that was emergency work.
“Rules are made to broken,” Jones said Wednesday, driving along a deserted downtown street after about a foot of snow had fallen. “Valentine’s Day is a once-a-year event.”
Most customers were surprised to see him.
“One guy even gave me a $50 tip just for coming out,” he said.
Many giftless spouses across the Midwest and Northeast gladly would have done the same on a day when blowing snow and sleet glazed windshields and roads, messing up Valentine’s Day flower deliveries and wrecking couples’ plans for romantic dinners out.
“We are dead,” said Edigio DiPaola, owner of Spennato’s Restaurant in Northfield, Ohio. He predicted his intimate restaurant would get little use Wednesday.
Not even a quiet evening at home was necessarily a comfortable alternative – about 300,000 customers lost power.
The storm also grounded hundreds of flights and forced the closing of schools and businesses from Kentucky to Maine. At least 13 deaths were blamed on the huge storm system.
Vermont’s state government ordered all nonessential employees home after noon, the New York Capitol in Albany came to a near-halt, and some Pennsylvania state workers were told to stay home. Maine’s governor declared a state of emergency to ensure deliveries of heating oil, and New York’s governor activated the National Guard.
The storm was good news for the ski industry in New England, where snow had been sparse this winter.
