Jennifer Librizzi was getting gas at the Smith’s Fuel Center in Kimball Junction when a slab of ice fell on her car, crushing the hood.
“Her car was not completely under the roof,” said Carol Librizzi, Jennifer’s mother, “and as she was gassing up she was going to get back in her car, and as she was going to get back in her car, she walked around the backside, thankfully. Had she walked around the front side, there was a huge chunk of snow and ice that fell off the roof, landed on the hood of her car and did some serious damage. She said she heard a loud kind of crack, a loud crack, wondered what that was, and then the crash came.”
She said she believed the slab was heavy enough to kill a person.
The family hadn’t received an estimate for how much the car damage will cost but was in touch with the insurance companies representing them and the gas station.
The slide happened Sunday, February 19. The mother said days later, she saw snow had piled more than a foot high in the same spot and wanted to put others on alert.
“I just want the public [to look] up at the overhangs and make sure that they're aware, to look up and be safe,” she said.
Two days before Librizzi’s scare, Lorraine Steucken got stuck behind her condo in Park Meadows after misjudging a patch of snow in her yard.
She said she wanted to clean up a mess a dog made after she got home from skiing. Still in her ski boots, she planned to shovel a path but abruptly sank.
“I knew the snow was going to be deep, but I didn't realize how deep it was,” Steucken said. “It was crusty, so the shovel didn't work, so I stepped on the first crust, and then I put my foot down and I went down about three feet, and I fell, and I absolutely could not get up for 15 minutes.”
She said if she hadn’t had her phone in her pocket, she might have been stuck outside in the cold for much longer. Luckily, she knew a neighbor was home.
“I wiggled this way, and I wiggled that way,” she said. “The snow was just like being in a big pile of sand or something, or in a pile of feathers. I did struggle trying to right myself for quite a while before I decided that I wasn't going to be able to do it, so I was really glad that I had my next door neighbor's number. Behind the condo, nobody would have seen me. It really was a little scary.”
She also said if she had worn gloves or had not been wearing heavy ski boots, she might have had an easier time freeing herself from the deep snow.
