An the pictures from Buffalo, New York State, people wade through masses of snow that reach past their knees. Whole houses are covered in icicles, cars are snowed in on deserted highways. On the night of Christmas Eve, Buffalo Airport reported: visibility zero meters. A severe winter storm swept across the Northeast of the United States over the Christmas weekend. American media reported on Monday at least 47 deaths, 25 of them in the Erie district in the US state of New York alone. Most deaths are said to have occurred in traffic accidents on snow-covered or mirror-smooth roads.
In a press conference on Christmas Day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “This storm will be remembered as the most devastating in Buffalo history.” Has”. Hochul had previously declared a state of emergency. US President Joe Biden pledged federal aid to New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Monday. “My heart goes out to those who have lost a loved one,” he said.
Even if the intensity of the storm subsides, it remains “dangerous to be outside,” Hochul said during a visit to the particularly affected city of Buffalo. Another 30 centimeters of fresh snow can be expected. The Great Lakes region of the northern United States is frequently hit by violent snowstorms; however, the situation over the Christmas weekend was considered exceptionally dire. More than a meter of snow fell in the region over the weekend.
Unable to respond to emergency calls
Erie County, one of the hardest hit, has already killed 25 people since Buffalo’s worst-ever winter storm in 1977, when nearly 30 people died, official Mark Poloncarz said. “Please don’t drive unless you’re an ambulance,” he said. “The conditions are bad.” A driving ban continues to apply in the west of the district.
“We’re taking people to doctors, nurses and hospitals today,” local sheriff John Garcia told CNN. The winter storm was the “worst” he had ever seen. At times there was zero visibility and the authorities could not respond to emergency calls. Gradually the roads are passable again after the wind has died down.
Buffalo was temporarily cut off from the outside world over Christmas, and emergency services were unable to reach particularly hard-hit areas. Front doors disappeared behind snow drifts up to three meters high, and the situation became life-threatening due to power failures in freezing temperatures.
Frozen in their cars
Hochul dispatched around 200 members of the National Guard to Buffalo and the surrounding area, who brought hundreds of people out of snow-covered cars and houses without electricity to safety. According to the authorities, however, people were still cut off from the outside world.
In Erie County, several people froze to death in their cars, others were discovered on the road in snowdrifts, and others suffered heart attacks while clearing snow, Poloncarz said. He spoke of “probably the worst storm in our lives and in the history of the city”.
Blizzard Elliott in the United States
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Even the whitecaps of the waves freeze
The extreme cold front stretched from the Great Lakes in the north of the country to the Rio Grande on the Mexican border. According to reports from the AP news agency, 60 percent of the American population have been affected by weather warnings for double-digit minus temperatures, freezing rain and snowstorms in the past few days. Temperatures fell well below average in many places, according to the National Weather Service. Video footage from Seattle, Northwest America, showed parked cars sliding down sloping streets on a layer of ice. Until Saturday, the city strongly advised against going outside unnecessarily or even driving. Emergency services rescued casualties by pushing them on a stretcher across the ice to the emergency vehicle, while sliding on their knees.
Across the country, more than 10,000 flights were canceled over the holiday weekend, when many Americans make long-distance trips to their families. Many were stuck in their cars for hours when the roads were no longer passable due to the storm. Temperatures were also unusually low in Texas on the border with Mexico. Many of the thousands of migrants currently awaiting the lifting of a controversial deportation rule camped out in sub-zero temperatures.
In the area of the particularly hard-hit city of Buffalo, according to Governor Kathy Hochul, there were still people waiting for rescue on Sunday evening and sitting in houses without electricity or with burst pipes. As of Sunday morning, there had been more than 500 rescue operations, but almost every available fire engine was stranded in the snow.
In the New England states in Northeast America, more than 270,000 people were temporarily without power, across America there were more than 1.6 million households on Saturday morning, according to the PowerOutage website. Authorities in Erie County fear more deaths; a curfew and a driving ban were still in effect on Monday.
The police asked residents to follow the instructions, saying it was “no joke”. Some drivers had stayed in their vehicles for more than 24 hours because it was impossible to get through the snowstorm. On Monday and Tuesday, sub-zero temperatures were forecast for the Buffalo region.
