BUFFALO, New York (WABC) — The death toll rose to 12 on Sunday from a snowstorm that dumped up to 4 feet of snow on Buffalo and western New York.
Some of those people were found in cars and some were even found in the street, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said. “We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days.”
For the first time in the Buffalo Fire Department’s history, they could not respond to any calls because of the conditions.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts – New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded – and shutting down the airport until Tuesday, according to officials.
In a storm briefing on Sunday evening, Hochul said that the storm had surpassed the blizzard of 1977 in terms of ferocity and longevity.
She urged residents to stay off the roads and said the driving ban for the City of Buffalo is not expected to be lifted on Monday.
Of the 12 storm-related deaths that have been confirmed so far, the ages of the victims range from 26 years old to 93 years old. Officials said they expect that death toll to rise by the end of the night.
The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (109 centimeters) at 7 a.m. Sunday.
Crews were out on Christmas Day, in an attempt to reach anyone who is still stranded.
Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat. But with city streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.
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“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running in the vehicle buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.
By 4 a.m. Saturday, with their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, stepping into his footprints as they trudged through drifts.
“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” he recalled thinking, but believing they had to try. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life.”
The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, less than 200,000 customers were without power Sunday at 3 p.m. EDT – down from a peak of 1.7 million.
Concerns about rolling blackouts across eastern states subsided Sunday after PJM Interconnection said its utilities could meet the day’s peak electricity demand. The mid-Atlantic grid operator had called for its 65 million consumers to conserve energy amid the freeze Saturday.
In North Carolina, less than 6,500 customers had no power – down from a peak of 485,000. Across New England, power has been restored to tens of thousands with just under 83,000 people, mostly in Maine, still without it. In New York, about 34,000 households were still without power Sunday, including 26,000 in Erie County, where utility crews and hundreds of National Guard troops battled high winds and struggled with getting stuck in the snow.
Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: 12 in Erie County, New York, ranging in age from 26 to 93 years old, and another in Niagara County where a 27-year-old man was overcome by carbon monoxide after snow blocked his furnace; 10 in Ohio, including an electrocuted utility worker and those killed in multiple car crashes; six motorists killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado’s subzero temperatures; and a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.
In Jackson, Mississippi, city officials on Christmas Day announced that residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures While in Tampa, Florida, the thermometer plunged below freezing for the first time in almost five years, according to the National Weather Service – a drop conducive to cold-blooded iguanas falling out of trees.
In Buffalo, William Kless was up at 3 a.m. Sunday. He called his three children at their mother’s house to wish them Merry Christmas and then headed off on his snowmobile for a second day spent shuttling people from stuck cars and frigid homes to a church operating as a warming shelter.
Through heavy, wind-driven snow, he brought about 15 people to the church in Buffalo on Saturday, he said, including a family of five transported one-by-one. He also got a man in need of dialysis, who had spent 17 hours stranded in his car, back home, where he could receive treatment.
“I just felt like I had to,” Kless said
Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
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