So Close, Yet So Far Away -- A Snowstorm Dilemma

The blizzard stopped being fun about the time I first saw those yellow lights flashing out my living room window. 

All through the day, I kept an eye on the cycle of fender-benders at 119th Street and Essington Road. It was a looping drama as SUVs, vans and squad cars cluttering up the corner and then being cleared away. The flow of traffic crested when school let out, held steady through rush hour and gradually trickled down to zilch.  

We had stocked up on groceries, hiked up the heat and hunkered down to ride out the blizzard. As the sun set, I thanked my own personal weather deities that my house was beautifully bright and warm. With a sip of cabernet, I toasted whatever fortune had sent me the good sense to stay inside.  

By about 9, the roads were nothing but a cloud of whirling dervish snowflakes. The only sound was the wind howling like a hurricane’s colder cousin. Just beyond the frosted panes of glass raged an iced-over hell that I shivered to think about. Yet I found it enthralling all at the same time. 

I had just spotted two sets of headlights coming slowly through the haze of snow when a flash of lightning cracked the darkness and a clap of thunder momentarily muted the screeching wind. 

I let out a yelp.  

And when I looked back out the window, those headlights weren’t moving forward anymore. Now, there were hazard lights flashing in place at an awkward angle on the side of the road.  

Then they went dark. A few minutes later, the lights would flash again. Off for maybe 10 minutes, on for another 10. The intermittent amber glow went on for a half hour. Then an hour. Then two hours.  

Off and on. Off and on. I watched them, gradually realizing I had been a silent witness to a pivotal moment in the evolution of the Blizzard of 2011. That crack of lightning, it seemed, marked the exact instant the road became impassable. One second those two lonely cars were making their way hesitantly through the snow. The next they could proceed no further. 

It didn’t take me two hours to come to the sickening understanding that there were people in those cars just a few paces on the far side of my yard. It wasn’t long before I began to share their steadily growing panic. As the minutes ticked away and the lights blinked on and off, on and off, a host of questions waylaid my thoughts.  

Were the two cars traveling together? Where we they going? Were there children in the cars? How frightened must they be as the raging wind rattled their cars? Were they cold? Were they hungry? Did they need to find a restroom? Did they have a cell phone? How much gas did they have left? Who was coming to get them? 

But it did take a couple of hours for me to start seriously looking for answers. The first 911 call I made around 11 p.m. got me a Bolingbrook dispatcher. 

“We aren’t sending any more emergency vehicles out,” a woman’s voice said in an agitated tone. 

“We have pulled all the tow trucks. Even the snowmobiles are stuck. The roads are impassable,” she said. 

There seemed nothing to do but hang up. I stared at my iPhone in disbelief.  

No one was coming, she said? No one was coming. 

By now I knew I wanted to invite those poor snowbound travelers in to spend the night. But how?  

They were so close. In the summer it would have been a quick skip out past the plum tree. But tonight they were a fatal freezing world away. It was surprising the people hadn’t made their way to my door on their own. I think I would have if I’d been in their predicament. The house was so unmistakably lit up and occupied.  

I briefly considered digging my ski suit out of the closet and braving the blizzard to show them in. But that seemed crazy risky. I stood waving and beckoning in the window. I shined a flashlight through the glass in hopes of letting them know someone in the house cared they were there. 

But nothing happened. The headlights lights just kept flashing on and off, off and on. 

If the emergency experts couldn’t save these poor stranded people, maybe they could at least help me rescue them. I dialed 911 again. 

This time I got the Will County Sheriff’s Office, which transferred me to the Plainfield Police Department. 

Did they know of the two cars stranded near 119th and Essington? Did they have a cell phone number? 

I asked the dispatcher to give the people stuck in their cars a call and let them know were welcome at the nearby house. It was odd, knowing what I learned the next morning, that the 911 operator didn’t tell me anything about rescue teams and snowmobiles working as we spoke to get people to shelters.

Could he give them my number, the dispatcher asked.  

Please do, I said. If they called, I’d go to the door and show my new guests in. I started thinking what I had for sandwiches and snacks.  

Phone in hand, I rushed to the window to see if anyone was getting out of the cars. The phone didn’t ring. Nothing moved outside. 

Around midnight, a snow plow cut a four-foot swath through the snow on the road. I cheered aloud as the two cars first rocked back and forth and back and forth and finally puttered slowly down the road. 

“I hope they make it home,” I thought as I headed up to bed.  

Right then, through the window at the top of the stairs, I saw a pickup truck slide into the snow drift right beside my mailbox. 

I listened for a knock on the door and the bark of the dogs as I fell asleep.