Snow shuts down Seattle for almost one week!

International Herald Tribune writer William Yardley ("Seattle sees most snow in a decade", 22 Dec. 2008, IHT.com), provides a portrait of snowflaked Seattle marking the city's unseasonably heavy snowfall in many years.

However, underneath the blanket of white around Seattle and much of Washington state is another story about how the city and region's infrastructure has buckled under the weight of the snow exposing its own vulnerability. The state's major airport at Seattle-Tacoma International could not accommodate thousands of stranded travelers who idled in long lines learning about flight cancellations over the weekend, and the region's public transit system has nearly crawled to a halt with limited service over snowy highways and hilly surface streets covered with snow and ice. And the City of Seattle, which has 27 snow plows, have been using sand rather than salt to de-ice roads, but many roads have remained glazed with layers of ice and snow throughout most urban areas in the region.

Indeed, for two weeks running Seattle residents and much of Washington State have seen unseasonably heavy snows this month. Snow, for many in the Seattle area, is typically a rarity in the city compared with headier snowy winters in places like Fargo, Fairbanks, Minneapolis, Chicago and Boston. Although occasional snowfall will happen in Seattle and create bewilderment, confusion and wide-eyed wonder for a day or so, residents are not experienced with long-term periods of snow -- and continued snow accumulation.

As week two progresses and a December 24 snow underway, some interesting social and civic issues emerge. Trash collection has been indefinitely suspended for parts of the area like in West Seattle, although waste disposal and recycling is voluntarily for area residents who can leave their homes by car. Roads are not salted because the City of Seattle deems the salt run-off to be harmful to the environment. Considering this, many roads -- including major arterials, bridges, and the Alaskan Way Viaduct -- remain icy and snowy and general pose hazardous conditions to motorists.

Those opting for transit alternatives have had to wait for an hour or more for limited "shuttle" service if buses arrive. However, for the most part, King County Metro and Sound Transit bus service has been negligible at best, leaving many stranded at bus stops with a limited fleet in circulation. Over the weekend Seahawk fans returning home waited for up to 2 hours for a game-day commuter train serving communities south of Seattle.

However, the general point is that a city this size continues to rely on a transit system we deserve as no one seems willing to advance and budget for a better solution. Every city on the West Coast -- San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma, and Vancouver, B.C. -- all offer effective modern transit systems to serve the needs of their communities. Seattle, by contrast, which has kept apace with continued growth despite the recent downturn in the nation's economy, depends on a 20th century transit option dating back to the 1940s in a region that esteems 21st century values with regard to the environment, politics, medicine, aerospace, and technology.

And while snow accumulation has been less than a foot in most outerlying areas and about 5-6 inches in Seattle, it is no longer laughable that services are curbed because of snow and ice. Sea-Tac airport was pretty much a warehouse of stranded travelers -- 3,000 plus -- as airlines grounded flights. The runways could not be de-iced quick enough with weekend snowfall, but some flights resumed in the past few days.

As snow falls overnight with a new accumulation of 4 inches of new snow by Dec 24 -- and snow predicted off and on through New Year's Eve -- most people will have a winter to remember for a long time.

Photo: Mike Kane / P-I.