Dec 25 (Reuters) – A deadly snowstorm paralyzed Buffalo, New York, on Christmas Day, trapping motorists and rescue workers in their vehicles, leaving thousands of homes without power and raising the death toll from storms that have chilled much of the United States for days.
At least 30 people have died in weather-related incidents in the United States, according to an NBC News count, since a deep freeze gripped most of the nation, along with snow, ice and howling winds from a storm that emerged from the Great Lakes region. Friday.
CNN has reported a total of 26 weather deaths.
Much of the loss of life has been centered in and around Buffalo, on the shores of Lake Erie in western New York, as cold, heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of cold air moving over warmer lake waters- persisted through the holiday. weekend.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the confirmed death toll from the storm rose to 13 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest casualties included some found in cars and some in snowbanks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise further.
“This is not the Christmas that any of us expected or hoped for,” Poloncarz said on Twitter on Sunday. “My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit the greater Buffalo area since a 1977 snow that killed nearly 30 people.
“We have now surpassed the scale of this storm, in its intensity, its longevity, the ferocity of its winds,” Hochul said at an evening news conference, adding that the current storm will likely go down in history. like “the storm of” 22.”
RESCUE OF THE SALCATORS
The latest blizzard came nearly six weeks after a shorter-lived, but lake-effect storm hit western New York.
Despite a road travel ban in place since Friday, hundreds of motorists in Erie County were left stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops called in to help with rescues hampered by whiteout conditions and drifting snow, Poloncarz said.
Many snowplows and other equipment sent on Saturday and Sunday got stuck in the snow, “and we had to send rescue missions to rescue the rescuers,” he told reporters.
The Buffalo Police Department posted an online plea to the public for help in search and recovery efforts, asking those who “have a snowmobile and are willing to help” to call a hotline for instructions .
The severity of the storm was remarkable even for a region accustomed to harsh winter conditions.
Christina Klaffka, 39, of North Buffalo, saw shingles blow off her neighbor’s house and heard windows rattling from “hurricane winds.” He lost power along with his entire neighborhood Saturday evening, and was still without power Sunday morning.
[1/9] A snowplow is stuck on the road after a winter storm hit the Buffalo region on Main St. in Amherst, New York, U.S., on December 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
“My TV kept flickering while trying to watch the Buffalo Bills-Chicago Bears game. I lost power shortly after the third quarter,” he said.
John Burns, 58, a retiree in North Buffalo, said he and his family were trapped in their home for 36 hours by the storm and the extreme cold, which he described as “painful and unpleasant.”
“Nobody was out. Nobody was even walking their dogs,” he said. “Nothing happened for two days.”
Snowfall totals were difficult to calculate, he added, because of high winds that reduced accumulation between houses, but they accumulated a 5-foot (1.5-meter) drift “in front of my garage.”
Hochul told reporters Sunday that the Biden administration had agreed to support his request for a federal disaster declaration.
About 200 National Guard troops were mobilized in Western New York to assist police and firefighters, conduct welfare checks and bring supplies to shelters, Hochul said.
THE ELECTRICITY HAS BEEN OUT
The largest storm system moved east on Sunday, after cutting power to up to 1.5 million customers at the peak of outages late last week and forcing thousands of cancellations of commercial flights during the holiday travel period.
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 150,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power Sunday, down sharply from the 1.8 million without power earlier Saturday. In Buffalo, 15,000 residents were still without power Sunday evening, Poloncarz said.
He said an offline power substation was sealed off by an 18-foot pile of snow, and utility crews found the entire facility frozen inside.
Christmas Day temperatures, while beginning to recover from the near-freezing readings that were widespread Saturday, remained well below average across the central and eastern United States, and below freezing even as far as the Gulf Coast, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist. Rich Otto said.
Nearly 4 feet of snow was measured at Buffalo Airport on Sunday, according to the latest NWS count, with whiteout conditions south of Buffalo through the afternoon as continued flurries dumped 2 to 3 inches of snow per hour
In Kentucky, officials confirmed three storm-related deaths since Friday, while at least four people were killed and several injured in auto-related crashes in Ohio, where a 50-vehicle pileup closed the turnpike of Ohio during a snowstorm Friday.
Other deaths related to vehicle crashes caused by the extreme cold or weather were reported in Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas and Colorado, according to news reports.
(The story has been reloaded to remove extraneous words from the headline)
Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Idrees Ali, Ismail Shakil, Rick Cowan and ; Written by Steve Gorman; editing by Ross Colvin, Diane Craft, Nick Zieminski, Leslie Adler, Gerry Doyle and Bradley Perrett
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Ahmed Abulenein
Thomson Reuters
Washington-based correspondent covering US health and pharmaceutical policy with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies it oversees, such as the Food and Drug Administration, formerly based in Iraq and Egypt .