116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Travelers digging out snowbound cars at The Eastern Iowa Airport
‘Iowa Nice was definitely on display’
Armed with just an ice scraper and warm memories of their trip to Hawaii, Josh Figg and Bryant Duffy had to dig their SUV out of three feet of snow Saturday at The Eastern Iowa Airport.
“I actually have a car shovel, but it was sitting in our garage,” said Figg, 39, of North Liberty.
While Figg and Duffy were in Kauai and Oahu, two winter storms left their car and others in the airport parking lot buried under drifts or blocked in by plowed snow. Adding insult to injury, the temperature when they flew in Saturday afternoon was in single digits.
Duffy had packed his winter coat in the car, but Figg was in just a sweatshirt and vest with a bandanna tied around his head as they used a long-handled ice scraper with a brush to clear snow from behind the tires. They took turns sitting in the idling car when their hands and feet got too cold.
When Duffy spotted an airport plow driving nearby, he flagged down the driver.
“They were wonderful,” Figg said of the plow drivers. “It looked like they were out there to help people dig out.” The plow driver helped clear snow from behind the couple’s SUV before going to help another driver whose car battery had died.
“Iowa Nice was definitely on display,” Figg said.
Figg’s company often offers incentive trips in early January. They’ve come home to bad weather before, including a storm that left their car coated in ice. That time, they rented another car to drive home and then came back the next day to scrape.
“We’ve come home to a lot of gnarly stuff before, but this was definitely a first coming home to this much snow,” he said.
Adam Smith, of Cedar Rapids, wanted to relieve his relatives of this burden and cleared the snow from on and around their parked car Monday before their flight was expected to arrive around midnight.
Airport Spokesperson Pam Hinman said the airport has shovels at the Guest Services desk across from baggage claim and Guest Services staff may be able to assist, although their primary responsibilities are assisting people with wheelchairs and valet customers.
“In really tough situations, our maintenance folks also assist, but they are also busy clearing runways, taxiways, sidewalks, parking lots, etc,” Hinman said.
For future travel, guests may want to consider the full-service valet option, which requires a reservation and costs $20 per day.
Figg said he wishes The Eastern Iowa Airport would build a covered parking lot or ramp like the Des Moines International Airport. Covered parking in Des Moines starts at $20 a day, compared to the $11 per day in Cedar Rapids long-term parking.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
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