BUFFALO, NEW YORK (AP) – A frigid winter storm killed at least 18 people as it swept across the United States (US), knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, leaving millions of people on edge about the possibility of blackouts.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, New York with hurricane-force winds causing whiteout conditions. Emergency response efforts were paralysed and the city’s international airport was shut down.
Across the US, at least three people died in the Buffalo area, including two who suffered medical emergencies in their homes at the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga and couldn’t be saved because emergency crews were unable to reach them. Officials attributed deaths to exposure, car crashes, a falling tree limb and other effects of the storm.
Deep snow, single-digit temperatures and 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 would be closed through today and almost every fire truck in the city was stranded in the snow.
“No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak,” Hochul said.
Blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power in places from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern US that rolling blackouts might be required.
PJM Interconnection based in Pennsylvania said power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents in 13 states to conserve electricity.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to 10 million people in the state and parts of six surrounding ones, directed local power companies to implement planned interruptions but ended the measure by Saturday afternoon.
Across the six New England states, over 273,000 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 as of the afternoon, down from a peak of over 485,000, but utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for “the next few days”.
James Reynolds of Greensboro 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”.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said another person died in Buffalo and said the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history”.
Poloncarz said 71 centimetres of snow accumulated as of Saturday in Buffalo.
On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a pileup involving some 50 vehicles.
A driver at Kansas City, Missouri was killed on Thursday after skidding into a creek and three others died on Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.
The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
The National Weather Service said about 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning and temperatures plummetted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians.