High winds cause death, injuries in Northeast blizzard

CHATHAM, Mass. – An Atlantic storm created blizzard conditions in parts of the Northeast corridor on Wednesday while whipping Maine and Massachusetts with wind gusts that fanned a Boston brownstone fire that killed two firefighters. In West Virginia, two people were killed in a traffic pileup blamed on poor visibility caused by snow.

The storm dumped up to 10 inches on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard before pummeling eastern Maine with wind-whipped snow and gusts reaching 60 mph.

“There’s a lot of snow. It’s hard to tell how much because it’s blowing sideways outside,” said Suzannah Gale, owner of the Homeport Inn in Lubec, Maine.

Up and down the coast, the wind caused havoc.

Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, saw winds gusting to 80 mph.

In Boston, the powerful wind sent smoke billowing through the Back Bay neighborhood Wednesday as firefighters battled a large fire in a four-story brownstone. Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Finn said he had never seen a fire travel so fast and escalate so quickly and he believes that was because of strong winds, with gusts of up to 45 mph, off the nearby Charles River.

The two firefighters who died, Michael R. Kennedy and Lt. Edward J. Walsh, had been trapped in the building’s basement. Thirteen other firefighters were injured.

The combination of wind and snow created whiteout conditions that were blamed on a pair of pileups involving 40 vehicles Wednesday on Interstate 81 around Falling Waters, W.Va. Two people were killed and seven were injured, state police said.