Sixteen people have died after a freezing snowstorm with strong winds hit the Buffalo, New York area in a storm that the state’s governor has described as “devastating.”
The dead were found outside or in cars, and reports of even more deaths were reviewed Sunday evening, Buffalo police said in a statement.
“The authorities have received further emergency calls about bodies, which the police are also working diligently to confirm and recover,” the ministry said. “The BPD is also working very hard to review social assistance to reduce potential deaths.”
The death toll related to storms in the department rose from six early Sunday to 10. Police have recovered a total of four bodies and confirmed that there are at least six more, the department said.
further six weather-related deaths were reported outside the city, in Erie County. According to a count from CNNBreakingNews.net, the national number of deaths related to the extreme holiday weather over the weekend was 46 late on Sunday.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference that some of the dead were found after impassable roads delayed emergency response.
The county deaths reported in Amherst and Cheektowaga included a person who was in a building, he said.
Others seemed to succumb to cardiovascular events while removing snow, Poloncarz said. Diving temperatures can narrow arteries and increase blood pressure, increasing the risk of manual snow removal.
Governor Kathy Hochul said at the same press conference that she had examined some of the damage: “It’s devastating. It goes into a war zone. The vehicles on the sides of the road are shocking.”
Buffalo was under a driving ban, and Mayor Byron W. Brown said police asked people with snowmobiles to help with search and recovery efforts.
Hochul said the extent of the storm would be worse in its intensity and intensity of the winds than the famous snowstorm of 1977. According to the Northeast Regional Climate Center, this storm was blamed for 29 deaths.
According to Hochul, state police were involved in over 500 rescues, including assisting elderly people in hospitals and giving birth to a baby.
Acting Superintendent of the New York State Police, Steven A. Nigrelli, confirmed two cases of looting in the Buffalo area.
“They are currently still being investigated,” he said during the news conference with the governor on Sunday evening. “These are individual cases. It doesn’t reflect the great community.”
More than 13,000 customers in the state were without power early Monday, according to grid tracker PowerOuttage.us. Poloncarz said power might not be fully restored until Tuesday.
“The substations are frozen. They had snowed under snow. We had a report that an 18-foot drift could be seen on it at a substation,” he said. “And when they came in, the substation was frozen. They still don’t even know to what extent the damage has occurred in the substation.”
Much of Buffalo is impassable, Poloncarz said. He told people from areas where conditions had improved not to travel to Buffalo to save family and friends.
Officials saved “hundreds and hundreds” of people, some of them with snowplows, as they were the only vehicles that could reach people stranded in cars, Hochul said.
“This will go down in history as the most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long, historic history, having fought many battles, many severe storms,” she said on Sunday.
Feiertagssturm verursacht massenhafte Stromausfälle und Reiseverzögerungen
At around 10 a.m., according to the National Weather Service, approximately 43 inches of snow—or more than 3½ feet—had fallen at Buffalo’s airport in the last 48 hours.
There was a period when officials were unable to send rescue workers or Ministry of Public Works crews, Poloncarz said. It is believed to be the first time the Buffalo Fire Department was unable to respond to phone calls, he said.
“It was bad, to say the best,” said Poloncarz. “It was as bad as anyone had ever seen it.”
The utility company National Grid had said that some crews were unable to reach the areas where they were needed due to the “unprecedented severity” of the storm. The company had announced on Sunday that the restoration work would be carried out around the clock.
Buffalo had been warned of blizzards, but a winter storm warning was in effect on Sunday afternoon until Monday at 4 a.m.
According to the National Weather Service, there could be 8 to 16 inches of extra snow in the region, which includes Buffalo, Batavia, Orchard Park and Springville. The most snow was expected for the “Southtowns” and southwestern Erie County.
Officials asked New Yorkers to stay home so crews could clear the roads. State Police Superintendent Steven Nigrelli said the roads were “littered” with abandoned vehicles.
“Stay home. Be a good neighbor,” he said, alluding to Buffalo’s nickname as the “city of good neighbors.”
Most of the USA was hit by a severe winter storm with dangerously low temperatures.
In the last month, areas south of Buffalo, such as Orchard Park, saw around 7 feet of snow. Poloncarz, however, said the situations were not comparable.
He said he was in touch with the Biden administration to initiate a disaster declaration.