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 Notably absent was much of the 2 feet (30 cm) of snow that
blanketed much of the Boston area, since for much of the storm,
Ocean Street was under water because of flooding from a breached sea
wall. About a dozen homes were badly damaged.
"This area sees flooding regularly, but we haven't seen damage like
this since the blizzard of '78," town planner Greg Guimond said as
he surveyed the wreckage. "The problem was the sustained wave
action; the houses can't handle it."
Millions across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New
York were digging out on Wednesday from the storm, which dumped up
to 3 feet (90 cm) of snow in places, though it largely bypassed New
York City.
Schools remained closed in Boston and most of its suburbs for a
second straight day but life was otherwise returning to normal with
the city's transit system and airport resuming service and a travel
ban lifted.
But the recovery in the ocean-facing section of Marshfield was far
from seamless on Wednesday, with many homes without power and coated
in ice. Residents who rode out the storm said they had relied on
fireplaces to keep warm.
 Further up the coast, Governor Charlie Baker met with officials in
Scituate, which also reported flood damage and where roads were
blocked by a mix of snow and water-borne debris that had blocked
access to some homes without power.
Baker said he would order additional state heavy equipment into the
region to help with cleanup.
"There is so much snow and other activity associated down here with
that storm that their resources and their assets are pretty much
flat out," Baker told reporters in Scituate.
Tim Mannix, whose Marshfield house was pounded by waves after the
seawall failed, watched a front-end loader clear debris away from
the front of the building. His face was badly bruised and marked by
a long line of stitches above his nose after waves knocked a sliding
glass door on him.
"Thankfully it was a fast-moving storm, just one tide," the
58-year-old fisherman said. "Imagine what it would have been like
had it stayed around."
'WORSE AND WORSE'
As he surveyed the damage in Marshfield while walking his dog,
67-year-old Donny Boormeester said the storm was the worst he had
experienced since moving to the town in 1969.
"Every year, the storms get worse and worse," the retired produce
buyer said. "The water gets closer to the houses."
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He said the streets near his home flooded twice a year in recent
years, an estimate his neighbors agreed with.
"It used to be a novelty," Boormeester said.
Increased flooding is a problem up and down the New England
coastline that has been exacerbated by rising sea levels, said
Cameron Wake, director of the University of New Hampshire Climate
Change Research Center.
"Places that used to not flood are getting flooded now and the
reason is not because we didn’t have hurricanes or Noreasters in the
past," Wake said. "The reason is because sea level has risen and so
for any given storm surge we’ve added an extra foot of sea on top of
that. It doesn’t make a big difference until we see a big storm and
we see systems fail that haven’t failed in the past."
Marshfield is looking for other ways to protect homes from flooding,
including seeking Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to
help raise other houses above potential floodwaters.
"We just had a meeting with FEMA on Thursday about elevation
grants," Guimond said of the talks held last week.
The severe weather claimed the lives of at least two people, an
80-year-old man who collapsed and died while shoveling snow in
Trumbull, Connecticut, on Tuesday and a teenager who died while
snow-tubing outside New York City on Monday.
(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Barber in Boston, Suzannah
Gonzales in Chicago and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by
Lisa Von Ahn and Bernard Orr)
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