CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. - After enduring days of epic snowfall, residents, rescue teams and public officials in the Buffalo, N.Y., area are bracing for still more weather-related danger in the form of suddenly warmer temperatures and rain.
In little more than 72 hours, western New York towns along Lake Erie have been buried beneath as much as 6 feet of snow, stranding vehicles on roadways, trapping people in their homes, bringing down power lines and causing 10 deaths.
Businesses and schools have been closed as more than 20 communities instituted driving bans. State officials also closed 140 miles of Interstate 90, from Erie, Pa., through Buffalo to Rochester, N.Y. The National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres and the National Football League's Buffalo Bills had their respective games postponed.
'I think this is worse than what anyone expected because nobody has seen this before,' New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday while visiting members of the state's National Guard, who were digging out Seneca Street in Buffalo.
'What's better than I expected is the cooperation and the deployment of the number of people who are willing to help. ... The friendliness of New Yorkers and the tenacity of New Yorkers, that's always refreshing to see.'
Mr. Cuomo hailed more than 5,000 emergency workers, the vast majority of them pitching in with snow removal, who came from all across New York and from neighboring states, including Pennsylvania.
'This is, I believe, the largest deployment of its kind, ever,' Mr. Cuomo said of the response during a morning news conference at a State Department of Transportation depot. 'We've had literally thousands of people from across the state coming in to help and hundreds of pieces of equipment coming from as far away as Long Island, and more are on the way.'
The numbers as of Thursday afternoon, according to N.Y. Transportation Commissioner Jo McDonald: 880 pieces of equipment including 460 plows, 129 loaders, 70 blowers and dump trucks, and that wasn't counting the private and commercial equipment being used. Contractors were removing snow with construction equipment as front-end loaders and dump trucks could do more than plows.
'It's a tremendous challenge to move this much snow, and where do you put it?' Mr. Cuomo asked.
Frustrated residents, many of them trapped in their homes along unplowed side roads, worked the phones to government and emergency officials.
Some folks dared to venture outside, trudging in the snow-covered streets, dodging massive plows. Many retrieved needed food, fuel and other goods by snowmobile and sled, but store shelves were starting to become bare, and service stations were running out of gas.
Hundreds of abandoned vehicles remained buried in snow along roadways throughout the region, complicating crews' efforts to plow, but the good news was that everyone has been evacuated from those vehicles, Mr. Cuomo said.
'There is nobody currently on the Thruway System that needs to be removed,' said Superintendent Joe D'Amico of the New York State Police, who joined the governor for the news conference with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and Maj. Gen. Patrick Murphy, commander of the New York National Guard.
'There's about 45 tractor-trailers [whose drivers] have decided to weather out the storm in rest areas. They're in good shape,' Mr. D'Amico said.
'No one was seriously hurt or died on the road because of the storm,' Mr. Cuomo said.
The ban on driving remains in effect throughout most of the region, even though some of the main roads have been cleared.
'For two reasons: One, it's unsafe; and two, it makes everybody's job harder,' the governor said. 'There is a driving ban for a reason. Stay in your homes, pretty, pretty please.'
The governor, who also visited a local warehouse with a collapsed roof, spoke of the devastation that had occurred and has yet to occur, in phases. The first two phases were the separate poundings from the snowstorms. The next will be the rain and the higher temperatures that threaten to produce flooding and add more weight to already-overstressed structures, he said.
'It's going to get worse before it gets better,' Mr. Cuomo said.
The weather forecast for Buffalo calls for temperatures in the mid-40s on Saturday, reaching into the high 50s by Monday. There is a 60 percent chance of rain through the weekend, according to AccuWeather.
'Our concern is that as this goes on and as the rain comes the snow that is on the roof on the buildings will become heavier, and there will be the potential of building collapses and roof collapses. ... There's going to be a lot of damage to homes and businesses.'
As he spoke, authorities were evacuating a nearby nursing home where the walls were beginning to buckle. More than 180 residents of the Garden Gate Center in Cheektowaga were transported to a local business park.
'We have equipment coming in from all over the state, pumps, etc., but you can't prevent it. So preparing means getting ready to handle the damage, which is never a good situation to be in,' the governor said.
Dan Majors: dmajors@post-gazette.com and 412-263-1456.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, November 20, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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