Lives saved, people rescued. All in a day’s work in CT, no matter the weather

Hartford Courant – Sunday, March 1, 2026
By Kenneth R. Gosselin

The recent Nor’easter that unleashed a blast of winter fury the likes of which hasn’t been seen in Connecticut for more than a decade, dumped as much as 30 inches of snow and whipped up a blizzard in some parts of the state.

Amari Venett-Flucker drove through some of worst of it last Monday afternoon on his way to work at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London.

A private transport assistant at the hospital, the 12-mile ride from his home in Montville to the hospital usually takes less than a half hour. In the storm, it was closer to an hour. And along the way, he encountered plows making their first passes, downed trees and power lines, traffic signals not working and wind blowing so hard, it made for nearly white-out conditions.

“There were the Eversource cars with police, but they couldn’t get out because it was just too windy,” Venett-Flucker said.

On days of heavy snowfall when many workers stay at home and work remotely, hospital and nursing home employees, first responders, utility repair crews and snowplow drivers must venture out. Their work cannot be put off for better weather.

“A hospital is like a ceaseless wheel,” Venett-Flucker said. “No matter what happens, the hospital is always open. Nobody really wants to be in the hospital. So, you owe it to the patients that are stuck there to at least try your hardest to be there.”

Employment law experts say businesses have a wide latitude when it comes to requiring employees to report to work during major snowstorms.

“It is not an area that is highly regulated by the law,” said Daniel A. Schwartz, a partner and chair of the employment law practice at Shipman & Goodwin in Hartford. “For example, there is no federal law requiring hazard pay or double time for working in a snowstorm. Some employers will as an encouragement, but it is not an area that is thought of as being particularly regulated.”

However, Schwartz said some of the requirements — and further compensation — may be spelled out in contracts for employees that are represented by a labor union.

“So that may have been worked out in advance,” Schwartz said.

For some employees, it’s not a matter of compensation, but of mission. They know they just need to report to work, no matter what the weather forecast.

In the thick of Monday’s Nor’easter, Mark Siegel trudged along Temple Street in New Haven at 8 a.m. to his work at Yale New Haven Hospital. A pulmonary and critical care physician, Siegel has experience in dealing with weather extremes having worked at the hospital since 1992.

Siegel lives in Hamden, a little over six miles away. But he chose to stay overnight at the Omni Hotel, making sure to pack his heavy boots. His walk to York Street — through often nearly knee-deep snow — took about 20 minutes, sometimes in the middle of the street, sometimes on the sidewalk. That’s about how long it typically takes Siegel to drive from his home to the hospital.

“My wife told me that in the morning she couldn’t see where our property ended and the street started,” Siegel said. “So I probably would have had a hard time driving it.”

Siegel said he currently works with patients who are leaving intensive care but aren’t ready for a room on a patient floor, known as “step-down” that’s in-between.

“I take care of very sick people and patient care doesn’t stop with the weather and so, one way or another, we all had to be here,” Siegel said, noting that an entire staff of doctors and nurses did the same to prepare for the snowstorm.

“The point is for this type of medicine that we practice: it’s not elective. It’s not something we can do from a distance. When I got there, I had to deal with somebody who was quite sick — within a couple of minutes of walking in the door.”

‘Beware the month of March’

Two major snowstorms — in late January and this past week — hit Connecticut with a noticeable one-two punch, breaking a mild streak of winters going back to 2019. Each of those snowstorms were accompanied by an average of up to a foot-and-a-half of snow, meteorologists said.

But Joe Furey, co-chief meteorologist at WTNH in New Haven, said Connecticut caught a break between this past week’s Nor’easter and the one in January. Two blizzards headed in the direction of the state veered off.

The next chance for snow could come on Monday or Tuesday, “maybe one to three inches or maybe even more, but not a blockbuster storm,” Furey said. A stretch of warmer weather is now forecast to follow in the second week of March, but winter may not be done with Connecticut as the month unfolds, Furey said.

“The cold is going to keep punching at us, and the big storms are still lurking,” Furey said. “And there may be one more big one that wants to take a run at us. So, beware of the month of March.”

More snow would mean more hours behind the wheel of a snowplow for Adrian Gray.

Gray said this past week’s storm was the largest that he has seen working for the public works department in East Hartford for the last seven years— and the most difficult to clear.

The snow was heavy and wet, as compared to the Jan. 25 storm that brought in relatively light and fluffy snow.

“This one was more of a challenge,” Gray said. “A couple of times I got stuck out there. You try to rock yourself out of it. Then you get out shoveling. At one point, there was too much snow, so the loader had to come and push me out.”

Gray said he and other snowplow operators come in well before the snow is expected to fall so roads can get treated. In last week’s Nor’easter, that meant reporting for work at 5 p.m. on Sunday and not leaving until 11 p.m. on Monday. He reported back to work at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Gray said.

“I’ve been doing it so long that my body is used to it,” Gray said. “But it’s rough because I have an 18-month-old at home, and when she hasn’t seen her daddy in a couple of days, that’s the challenge when you go home.”

In East Hartford, the town must clear 151 miles of roadway in a snowstorm mapped out in 20 plow routes.

Police and fire may respond to calls even before snow plows clear city and town streets.

“We’re so used to adjusting,” Fred Nelson Jr., a fire department lieutenant in Hartford, said. “So where we typically maybe always follow ‘Plan A,’ but we also have ‘Plan B’ and ‘Plan C.’

Nelson, a nearly 20-year department veteran stationed at the Sigourney Street firehouse in Hartford’s Asylum Hill, said snow poses special obstacles in the instance of a fire. If streets aren’t plowed, it may take more time to position firefighting vehicles. If hydrants are buried, they first need to be dug out before hoses can be connected.

On medical calls, firefighters have been known shovel paths so paramedics can more easily transport patients in distress, Nelson said.

After the Jan. 25 storm, Nelson recalls firefighters returning from a call coming upon a car stuck in the middle of the street. They jumped out, grabbed shovels and help dig the tires out.

“And we gave them a push,” Nelson said. “We’re kind of like that team — we do a little bit of everything.”

‘I’m ready to go’

The emergency department team at the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain assembled well in advance of the arrival of this past week’s Nor’easter a week ago. But they never anticipated what would happen in the hours ahead.

At about 3 a.m. Monday, a man in his 60s with a rare cancer of the airways, arrived at the emergency room. It was clear, right from the start, that the patient would need to be transported to Hartford Hospital, HOCC’s sister hospital, for more specialized care. There was a big problem: Life Star helicopter was grounded because of the snowstorm.

But the patient’s health was too precarious to immediately transport: his blood pressure was dropping and he was bleeding so much that respiratory collapse was imminent. The patient needed a blood transfusion and other procedures to restore sufficient breathing.

“At one point, he went out on us to the point where he wasn’t responsive — no pulses and we ended up doing CPR and we were able to bring him back,” Ephrem Abraha, the ED charge nurse working that shift. A second round of CPR would take place some time later.

Transporting the patient 12 miles to Hartford Hospital would be ticklish. If the snowstorm wasn’t bad enough, extremely critical patients need someone from the ED to accompany paramedics on a transport.

Nicole Barbash, an emergency room physician, said she remembered seeing Rockman Ferrigno earlier in her shift and even joked about him helping them in the ED. Ferrigno, a hospital administrator and doctor with a background in emergency room medicine, also was working during the Nor’easter to support the staff.

“And so not even skipping a beat, Dr. Ferrigno was like, saying, ‘I’m ready to go,’ ” Barbash said.

Both Barbash and Abraha couldn’t say enough about how unusual Ferrigno’s action was: an administrator jumping into the back of an ambulance.

Ferrigno recalled the moment when the doors of the ER were opened to the outside around 6:30 a.m., normally a calm sight.

But this shift, “it was chaos, a blizzard,” Ferrigno said. “When we started driving, it wasn’t good. When we finally got to the highway, just serendipitously, three giant plows load onto the highway in front of us, and we have this plow escort. Who would have thought that would have occurred?”

The ambulance arrived at Hartford Hospital, its emergency department alerted to the patient, in about 25 minutes. As of Wednesday, the patient remained in intensive care, in critical condition.

“The patient would have died without the teamwork that I got to watch at HOCC,” Ferrigno said.

Boost to the gig economy?

Mike Casey knows he doesn’t have to hit the road in big snowstorms.

But as Uber driver for the past six years, he knows that a lot of his fellow drivers shy away from venturing out in the snow on what can be treacherous roads.

“I personally look forward to the snow only because I tend to make more money,” Casey said.

With fewer Uber drivers available, the passenger rates go up, Casey said. “It’s the law of supply and demand.”

Outfitted in his 2022 GMC Terrain SUV with 4-wheel drive, Casey said he transported 37 people in the greater Hartford area during the thick of the Nor’easter. His shift ran from 8:30 p.m. on Sunday until 11 a.m. on Monday.

Casey said his passengers largely were either going to work or coming home, with about 90% in the medical field. Some are nurses, CNAs, or certified nursing assistants, who normally take a bus, but that service was suspended in the Nor’easter; others just don’t like to drive in the heavy snow, Casey said.

Driving conditions deteriorated fast during the Nor’easter, Casey said. But the retired postal carrier says he brings plenty of experience to Uber.

“You know, ‘neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,’ so I’m used to the elements,” Casey said.

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