After a blizzard swept through the Southern California mountains, 79-year-old Alan Zagorsky found himself shut inside his home with snow blocking the door and stairs leading out.
He and his wife had enough food to get through the 10 days until volunteers finally arrived Wednesday to help clear roughly 10 feet (3 meters) of snow piled up outside their house in Lake Arrowhead. They had been running low on blood pressure medication, but teams had come a day earlier to resupply them in the upscale mountain community where Zagorsky has lived for more than two decades.
“We’ve been through many a snowstorm but nothing of this amount, that’s for sure,” he said, while a crew shoveled his driveway in the mountains east of Los Angeles. “Right now, they’re trying to find a place they can put this stuff.”
In an once-a-generation weather event, staggering amounts of snow fell in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountain ranges in late February, where thousands of people live in wooded enclaves. The areas are popular destinations for hikers and skiers who arrive by twisting, steep highways that have been frequently closed because of icy conditions.
Snow piled high above many homes’ first-floor windows and residents who could get out trekked on foot to buy groceries from stores with near-empty shelves or picked up boxes of donated food at a distribution center.
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