Motown? Call It Snowtown
With hundreds of miles of streets clogged with snow and 180,000 children forced to miss yet another day of school, Motown was still a mess a week after the Blizzard of '99.
While the city struggles to get up on its feet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jeffrey Kofman, another snowstorm belted the area.
The Midwest and Northeast region was again pelted Friday - this time with a gentler dose of snow and ice that nonetheless kept many indoors and made travel treacherous.
In Indiana, the stormy weather wreaked temporary havoc on a state pastime: 90 high school basketball games were postponed.
"We've got basically a blanket of ice," Indiana State Trooper Jackie Taylor said. "We're really bad right now. All our roads are completely covered with snow and ice and it's just really dangerous."
Schoolchildren in several states got an early start on their weekends as snow, sleet and freezing rain pelted much of the Midwest and Northeast, slowing travel and undoing the recent work of busy road crews.
Many areas were getting their third blast of snowfall in less than a week, including last weekend's monster storm that paralyzed parts of the Midwest.
Flights were delayed at several airports, including Baltimore-Washington International, where two main runways had to be plowed.
About 20 percent of incoming flights were canceled at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where even Air Force One was delayed by the weather. President Clinton, who had toured an auto show, left for Washington about 30 minutes late because of the slush, muck and snowfall.
Other cities got even more snow last week, but somehow Detroit has been left looking like Anchorage. Snowbound streets have made simple deliveries impossible. In small stores that means empty shelves.
Detroit gets about as much snow as Chicago and Boston, reports Kofman. The big difference is that Chicago has 700 trucks for snow removal; Boston, 450. Detroit has just 59. And, under city policy, they don't and won't clear side streets.
Mayor Dennis Archer defended himself against charges he dropped the ball when a foot of snow began falling last Saturday on this city of one million.
"We've been using our money to do other things that our citizens want. They want more parks. They want me to hire more police officersÂ…now clean up the residential streets, so we're going to reassess our policy," says Archer.
Critics say Detroit was unprepared and responded slowly once the snow started falling.
"This ain't California, this is Michigan," said City Council member Kenneth Cockrel Jr. "There was a certain amount of complacency. They just didn't take the warnings seriously."
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