Colorado Blizzard Strands Thousands

Traffic along southbound Interstate 25 toward Denver at the Colorado Highway 7 overpass comes to a standstill during a winter storm, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006, near Erie, Colo. (AP Photo/Peter M. Fredin) (Peter M. Fredin - AP)

One angry passenger, pharmacist Robert Helmer, waited for the first convoy of the day with bags under his eyes.

Helmer managed to get on a United Airlines flight to St. Louis on Wednesday morning, sat for an hour waiting for a late-arriving flight attendant, then three more hours on the tarmac before the flight was finally canceled. He spent the night on the airport floor, covered by what he could find in his carry-on bag.

"There's a lot of very bitter people here, and I'm one of them," Helmer said. "This was major mismanagement."

It was the biggest snowstorm to hit Colorado since a March blizzard in 2003 that shut down the region and killed six.

The storm brought life to a standstill for 3.8 million people along the Front Range _ a 170-mile urban corridor along the eastern edge of the Rockies that includes Denver. Police and National Guardsmen rescued hundreds of people stuck in cars.

Despite the slick roads and deep drifts, there were no immediate reports of any deaths or serious injuries in Colorado.

In Wyoming, a woman died while walking for help after her car became stuck in the snow, officials said. In Kansas, a woman was hit by a tractor-trailer on an icy road.

Denver's normally bustling downtown was all but empty Thursday, with a few people trudging down the middle of unplowed streets. Other people got around by snowmobile. Mail delivery across the region was suspended, and many malls were closed on what should have been one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The storm _ which lingered through midday Thursday _ also shut down I-70 and I-25, major routes through the West. It moved eastward Thursday afternoon, snarling air and road travel in Nebraska and Kansas.

At the Denver airport, Hartfield's family, desperate to get to Seattle, managed to rebook a flight for Christmas Eve, but held out hope of getting onto an earlier standby flight.

Hartfield and her husband, Andy, used luggage, Red Cross blankets, a cot and a flattened cardboard box scrounged from another family to wall off a spot for the night. While the parents tended 5-month-old Michael, their other children, Drew, 5, and Alexis, 3, made an adventure of the mess.

"The kids had a blast. It was like a camping trip for them," Hartfield said. "But we were tossing and turning the whole night."

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Associated Press writers Colleen Slevin, Eric Daigh, Dan Elliott, Jon Sarche, Judith Kohler, Steven K. Paulson and Chase Squires contributed to this report.