BUFFALO, N.Y. — Four days after snow started falling, the Buffalo area remained crippled on Monday by a devastating blizzard that left at least 28 dead and that officials said was the worst winter storm in more than 50 years.
— Four days after snow started falling, the Buffalo area remained crippled on Monday by a devastating blizzard that left at least 28 dead and that officials said was the worst winter storm in more than 50 years.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Four days after snow started falling, the Buffalo area remained crippled on Monday by a devastating blizzard that left at least 28 dead and that officials said was the worst winter storm in more than 50 years.
With the storm nearing its end, Buffalo residents started to venture out, particularly as their supplies of food ran low. But with many roads in western New York impassable, thousands still without power and more snow expected to continue falling through the end of the night on Monday, officials said that conditions remained dangerous and that they expected the death toll could rise.
“This has been a very difficult and dangerous storm,” Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, said at a news conference on Monday. “It’s been described as a once-in-a-generation storm. And everything that has been forecast, we have gotten in the city of Buffalo, and then some.”
A driving ban remained in place in Buffalo, a city of around 270,000 people, and in some of its immediate suburbs as authorities pleaded with residents to remain home. Brown said many of the city’s streets had yet to be plowed, with the early focus on clearing paths for ambulances, police officers, rescue vehicles and medical workers.
Complicating efforts, Gov. Kathy Hochul said, were “scores and scores of vehicles” that had been abandoned in ditches and snowbanks during the storm and had yet to be removed. In some cases, she said, snowplows and rescue vehicles had been trapped.
Hochul, a Democrat, said she had asked the White House for a federal disaster declaration. President Joe Biden told Hochul on the phone on Monday that he would make sure the state had the resources it needed, according to the White House.
Mark C. Poloncarz, the Erie County executive, said 27 deaths were linked to the storm in his county. Fourteen of those dead were found outside, and three were in a vehicle, he said. Four others died because they did not have heat, and three died in “cardiac-related events” while removing snow from outside homes and businesses.
In Niagara County, the sheriff’s office said a 27-year-old man in Lockport died of carbon monoxide poisoning after heavy snow blocked an external furnace, causing carbon monoxide to enter the house.
Western New York, where residents take pride in their resilience in the face of brutal winter weather, appeared to have suffered the worst of a fierce storm that brought bitter cold to much of the United States. At one point on Friday, roughly two-thirds of the U.
