Oct. 26 - This was the storm that brought the most advanced airport in the world to its knees.

Denver International Airport shut down for the first time in its 2 1/2-year history, forcing about 3,000 travelers to spend Friday night and Saturday in the terminal and concourses.

All flights, except a couple of freight flights, were suspended all day Saturday, and operations weren't expected to resume until Sunday.

"No airport is weatherproof," said DIA spokesman Chuck Cannon. "Miami closes during hurricanes, Dallas-Fort Worth closes during tornadoes and we closed during a blizzard.

"We can operate better in bad weather than any other airport in the world. We're the newest airport in the world, with the best technology and runway spacing. But there comes a time where you just can't keep ahead of Mother Nature."

The all-weather airport shut down not so much because the planes couldn't take off but because flight and service crews couldn't navigate down Pena Boulevard to get to work, Cannon said.

"This closing was caused by a combination of factors. The airlines couldn't get their flight crews in, they didn't have employees for the gates and ground servicing and there were no passengers," he said.

Gov. Roy Romer, attempting an emergency return from Washington, D.C., Saturday morning, was forced to fly to Salt Lake City and then into Grand Junction, where he got a car and drove to Denver. On Friday night with the fury of the storm building, more than 30 vehicles spun out or went off the road near the first DIA turnoff from Interstate 70, clogging the highway for plows.

More than 20 inches of snow fell Saturday, with 30-mile-an-hour winds drifting the snow. It wasn't until 4 p.m. Saturday that state highway department plows finally reached the terminal.

Airport officials sent one bus out from the terminal Saturday to retrieve as many stranded motorists as it could and bring them back to the terminal.

A shiver shot through area football fans when the Denver Broncos missed their scheduled 1 p.m. flight to Buffalo aboard a United Airlines charter flight. After returning to their practice facility in Arapahoe County, the team finally was able to get to DIA and was expected to fly out late Saturday evening.

And families and friends of the Colorado Rapids professional soccer team were unable to fly out to watch the team perform in today's national title game in Washington, D.C.

"People have been taking it very well. They're lying around with newspapers over their faces, reading books or just kicking back," Cannon said. "The Red Cross set up a coffee-and-doughnut line for passengers. Most of the shops and restaurants closed Friday night and couldn't get their people back Saturday to reopen." The storm brought out the best and the worst in people.

DIA officials, on realizing that the crowd was going to get hungry, called a flight kitchen, Chelsea Catering Co., and contracted for them to feed the stranded travelers.

Willie Lewis, customer service manager for Chelsea, said his crew of 12, which had been working 30 hours straight, assembled 3,000 sandwiches and lunch packs, which the city picked up around noon Saturday.

The food was distributed through the concourses and in the terminal. Lewis said Chelsea finally ran out of food and was forced to shut down. Cannon said DIA would pay for the food.

Other vendors took advantage of the dilemma. According to two teenage passengers who didn't want to be identified, Domino's Pizza on Saturday placed a black garbage bag over its normal menu, which listed pizza for $3.25. Clerks then taped a piece of paper up advertising pizza for $5 and requiring customers to also purchase a drink.

Angry customers who said they didn't want to purchase a drink were told by Domino's clerks that they had no choice if they wanted pizza. City regulations prohibit vendors from raising their prices more than 20 percent over what they charge in the rest of the metro area.