Dave Bertola, a spokesman for National Grid, said on Monday afternoon that there were still some 9,300 homes and businesses without power in Buffalo and another 3,000 without power in other parts of Erie County.
He said that efforts to restore power had been slowed by unplowed roads and difficulties reaching downed and damaged power lines. “The biggest challenge we’ve had is that with so much drifting snow, the visibility has been poor and streets were not plowed,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can to get out there.”
Beau Duffy, a spokesman for the New York State Police, said that more than 100 members of the state police were using snowmobiles and other special vehicles to help clear roads, reach stranded cars and move vehicles from roadways to make room for snowplows.
Mr. Poloncarz and Ms. Hochul, who grew up in the Buffalo suburbs, said this week’s storm was the worst in their memory. Both, at times, evoked comparisons to the city’s blizzard of 1977, which left 28 people in the state dead.
“No one thought we’d see a blizzard worse than the one in ’77 here,” said Ms. Hochul, who was 18 at the time of that monumental storm. “And we did this week.”
Though Buffalo is accustomed to significant snowfall, this has been in some ways a record-setting year. Last month, a winter storm dropped a record amount of snow for the region in a 24-hour period — 21.5 inches, eclipsing a previous record of 7.6 inches.
Ms. Hochul, at the time, said the state needed to take precautions to prepare for such storms, as climate change has appeared to make extreme weather more common. On Monday, she acknowledged that “historic storms are no longer historic to us.”
Source link
