Don't get me wrong I agree that the people should have been deplaned when it became apparent that the flight wasn't going anywhere for a long while.

Beeen there done that, except it was a thunderstorm instead of a blizzard, and we pretty much emptied the service carts and gave all the snacks and drinks/water to the folks as they were waiting in the terminal.

I completely agree that there are folks who could suffered more than just the normal pain of sitting in a modern day airline seat, and the situation was completely unnacceptable.

I have a hard time believing the snow was falling so hard that it was impossible to get these folks off these aircraft. Somebody dropped the ball somewhere and just let this happen.

You can get a lot done with a phone call to the right people, for example I got a taxiway closed in less than 30 min when the company I was working for at the time was repainting all the lines on the ramp and somebody forgot to talk to the airport admin people about it.