The Blizzard of '96 stranded hundreds of people at Trenton's train station; left thousands without electricity and heat for days; closed most schools and government offices for a week; cut off an estimated US$1 billion in Jersey commerce; forced the National Guard into service rescuing state troopers from snowbound police cruisers; and created strife between officials and residents demanding the plowing of their little streets. In the second week of January 1996, it can be said, many locales across the region looked like they did in the old pictures taken of them during the infamous Blizzard of '88: Houses drifted under; snowed-in main streets that looked like ghost towns; no cars or people on the streets."