18 dead as monster blizzard barrels through United States

Christmas Eve turned tragic when a frigid winter storm that has been raging in the United States, killed at least 18 people, and knocked power supply in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

According to reports, Buffalo, New York, bore the maximum brunt of the storm with hurricane-force winds causing whiteout conditions. Emergency response efforts were paralysed and the city’s international airport was shut down.

US officials have attributed the casualties to exposure, car crashes, a falling tree limb and other effects of the storm. At least three people died in the Buffalo area, including two who suffered medical emergencies in their homes and couldn’t be saved because emergency crews were unable to reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.

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Deep snow, single-digit temperatures and day-old power outages sent Buffalo residents scrambling on Saturday to get out of their houses to anywhere that had heat.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed through Monday morning and almost every fire truck in Buffalo was stranded in the snow.

“No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak,” Hochul said.

Blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern U.S. that rolling blackouts might be required.

Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection said power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents in 13 states to conserve electricity through at least Christmas morning.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to 10 million people in Tennessee and parts of six surrounding states, directed local power companies to implement planned interruptions but ended the measure by Saturday afternoon.

The start of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans game in Nashville was delayed an hour by a planned power outage. Across the six New England states, more than 273,000 electric customers remained without power on Saturday, with Maine the hardest hit and some utilities saying it could be days before electricity is restored.

In North Carolina, 169,000 customers were without power on Saturday afternoon, down from a peak of more than 485,000, but utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for the next few days.

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Those without power included James Reynolds of Greensboro, who said his housemate, a 70-year-old with diabetes and severe arthritis, spent the morning bundled beside a kerosene heater with indoor temperatures hovering in the 50s.

In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died in their homes on Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. He said another person died in Buffalo and said “the blizzard may be the worst storm in our community’s history.”

It was taking ambulances over three hours to do one trip to a hospital, Poloncarz said. Forecasters said 28 inches (71 cm) of snow accumulated as of Saturday in Buffalo. Last month, areas just south of Buffalo saw a record 6 feet of snow (about 1.8 meters) from a single storm.

The latest storm knocked out the furnace in the Buffalo home of Brian LaPrade, who woke up Saturday morning to indoor temperatures dipping to below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a pileup involving some 50 vehicles. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver was killed Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads. A utility worker in Ohio was also killed Friday while trying to restore power, according to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative. It said the 22-year-old died in an electrical contact incident near Pedro in Lawrence County. A woman in Vermont died in a hospital Friday after a tree broke in the high winds and fell on her. Police in Colorado Springs said they found the body of a person who appeared to be homeless as sub-zero temperatures and snow descended on the region. Near Janesville, Wisconsin, a 57-year-old woman died Friday after falling through the ice on a river, the Rock County Sheriff’s Office announced.

About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said. As millions of Americans were traveling ahead of Christmas, more than 2,360 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were cancelled on Saturday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

While in Mexico, migrants camped near the U.S. border in unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.

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Forecasters said a bomb cyclone when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow. Western New York often sees dramatic lake-effect snow, which is caused by cool air picking up moisture from the warm water, then dumping it on the land.

(With inputs from agencies)