I tend to agree with Borat, but I'm going to take it a little further. Sometimes with old machines, over a period of time, you get a bunch of water/sediment build up in the bottom of the gas tank. Normally it just sits there, but if the tank is run completely dry of fuel, all this water and gunk gets sucked into the fuel line and can either clog the fuel filter or the carb.
First thing I would try is to change the fuel filter if it has one (it might be in the gas tank itself). If that doesn't work, I would clean the carb. You said the blower was working ok before it ran out of fuel so most likely it's either the filter or the carb.
Before you dig into it, get some new fuel line because the old line has probably hardened and you might ruin it taking it off.
