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Businesses Stay Open in Blizzard

Shopkeeper Ty Gadino at a Midtown hardware store, Kansas City, Mo.
photo: Frank Morris/KCUR
Shopkeeper Ty Gadino at a Midtown hardware store, Kansas City, Mo.

Kansas City, Mo. – The enormous winter storm continued pummeling the Midwest, closing roads and forcing thousands of flight cancellations as it lumbered eastward. By evening most of Kansas City was shut down. But a number of businesses, like this little hardware store in Midtown, welcomed a steady stream of customers staggering in out of the blizzard.

Shopkeeper Ty Gadino says, "Can't close. People need this stuff: shovels, ice melt, kerosene, anything to keep warm."
Customer: "I knew you guys would be open."
Gadino: "See, that's why I stay open (laughs). Sleep here if I have to."

The temperature is dropping. The National Weather Service says the wind chill could hit 25 below Fahrenheit by Wednesday morning.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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