Kindness takes over during snowstorm commute from Hell

<p>Strangers were helping strangers during a major snowstorm in New Jersey that nearly crippled the state.</p>

News 12 Staff

Nov 16, 2018, 11:31 PM

Updated 1,988 days ago

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Strangers were helping strangers during a major snowstorm in New Jersey that nearly crippled the state.
Thousands of New Jersey residents say that it took them hours to get home from work. Many of them were trying to get to their children, who were also stranded due to the storm.
Catlin Ramos tells News 12 New Jersey that she was desperately trying to get to her 1-year-old son after she was told his day care would be closing early. She says that she and her husband both left their jobs in Newark early to travel 10 miles away to the day care center in Roseland.
But due to the intense traffic, the short trip took hours.
“By like hour 9, you’re just like, ‘When is this going to end?’” Ramos says.
Ramos says that after several hours her husband ditched his car and walked a mile to where she was stuck. All the while, their son was at the day care center. They finally reached their son at 1 a.m. Friday.
“When we arrived, he was in someone’s arms asleep,” Ramos says.
There were about 40 to 50 other children still at the Learning Experience day care center as well.
“Without a complaint, everybody kind of just picked up the pieces and worked to make sure the kids are happy and fed and entertained,” said Patty Dombrowski with The Learning Experience.
This is not the only example of children being taken care of while their parents desperately tried to get to them.
Teachers in West Orange cooked food at the school for students who were stranded in the snow. The students and teachers then camped out at the school while the storm cleared.
Ramos says that the storm may have brought some people closer together. She say that the kindness and generosity she witnessed outweighed the bad experience.
"There were times where we all just kind of leaned on each other. People were getting out of their cars and having conversations, and meeting people and just kind of exchanging things,” Ramos says. “I thought it was just really nice to see everyone get together when we needed each other."
Thursday’s storm dropped at least 9 inches of snow on parts of the state. State officials say that a series of traffic accidents delayed snowplow crews from cleaning the roadways.


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