December 24, 2008 in Nation/World

Weather wreaks havoc, wrecks plans nationwide

Slick Midwest roads lead to fatalities
By MICHAEL TARM Associated Press
 
Associated Press photo

Firefighters help a motorist down from a pickup after it slid off the road and rolled over in the ditch along westbound U.S. Highway 36 on Tuesday in Decatur, Ill.
(Full-size photo)

Denver flight mishap still a mystery

 DENVER – Aviation experts say it could take up to a year to figure out what caused a Continental Airlines plane to veer off a runway and slide into a snowy field at Denver International Airport on Saturday, injuring 38 people.

  National Transportation Safety Board investigators said they haven’t yet found any problems with the Boeing 737-500’s engines, brakes or wheels, but they haven’t ruled anything out. They haven’t released any information about the plane’s nose landing gear. That gear ended up under the plane, which landed on its belly in a frozen field about 2,000 feet from the runway.

 Authorities are trying to determine why an odd bumping and rattling noise was heard on the flight’s recorders in the seconds before Saturday’s crash.

 The noise was detected 41 seconds after the jet, bound for Houston, started speeding down the runway. Four seconds later, one of the crew members called for the takeoff to be aborted, said Robert Sumwalt, a NTSB spokesman.

 The recording ends six seconds after that, probably because the plane slammed to the ground after hurtling off an embankment, he said.

CHICAGO – On one of the biggest travel days of the year, hundreds of Amtrak passengers bound for holiday destinations hunkered down in waiting rooms – some for nearly 24 hours – as snowstorms and Arctic cold delayed their trains and disrupted other Christmas traffic.

Don and Barbara Seifert, of Prophetstown, Ill., spent a sleepless, frustration-filled night at Chicago’s Union Station with hundreds of angry customers.

After waiting 12 hours for their New York-bound train to depart, their breath visible in the frigid indoor air, the Seiferts finally abandoned plans to visit their son and his family for the holidays.

“It’s spoiled our Christmas, sure,” 73-year-old Don Seifert said Tuesday before he and his wife headed back to their western Illinois home.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said crews in some cities headed out with picks and shovels to clear snow-packed track switches; elsewhere, trains were held back to give lavatory pipes time to thaw.

Each train delay caused a ripple effect, with other trains and their crews at other points having to wait or readjust, he added.

Around 600 passengers in Chicago waited for up to 22 hours before finally boarding their delayed trains – the Lake Shore Limited, which was bound for New York, and the Seattle- and Portland-bound Empire Builder.

Amtrak says several trains scheduled to leave Chicago on Tuesday were canceled. Passengers on shorter-distance trains were put on buses instead.

Meanwhile, freezing rain was making driving hazardous across parts of the nation’s midsection. At least 12 people died in car crashes on rain and ice-slickened roads – two in Missouri, two in Kansas, one in Oklahoma, four in Kentucky, one in Ohio and two in Indiana on Tuesday.

Streets in Ohio were closed in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, Cleveland and elsewhere because of conditions. In Indiana, Evansville’s bus system suspended service for several hours, and accidents also tied up roads in and around Indianapolis, where sections of Interstate 465 and I-69 were closed. A 36-mile stretch of Interstate 64 in Kentucky was shut down due to ice and multiple crashes.

The Chicago Department of Aviation said more than 500 flights were canceled at O’Hare International Airport because of the weather, and many others were delayed by up to 2 hours.

© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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