Military police enforce driving ban
BUFFALO, N.Y. — State and military police were sent on Tuesday to keep people off Buffalo’s snowchoked roads, and officials kept counting fatalities three days after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations.
Even as suburban roads and most major highways in the area reopened, Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz warned that police would be stationed at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections because some drivers were flouting a ban on driving within New York’s secondmost populous city.
More than 30 people are reported to have died in the region, officials said, including seven stormrelated deaths announced Tuesday by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s office. The toll surpasses that of the historic Blizzard of 1977, blamed for killing as many as 29 people in an area known for harsh winter weather.
Greg Monett turned to social media to beg for help shoveling a 6-foot (1.8-metre) pile of snow from the end of his Buffalo driveway so he could get dialysis treatment Tuesday.
“This has been a nightmare,” he said in an interview on Monday.
Power had been out for a time at his family’s home, he said, so relatives ran a gas stove to keep warm, a practice he acknowledged was dangerous.
“We had to do what we had to do,” said Mr Monett, 43.
“We would have froze to death in here.”
His loved ones called 911 when his blood sugar dipped dangerously low
An aerial view of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition neighborhood in Buffalo, NY, which remains coated in a blanket of snow after a blizzard on Tuesday.
Buffalo News via AP and he nearly passed out Sunday night, but they were told it would take hours to get to the home, Monett said. He eventually recovered on his own.
Officials have said at news briefings that it was impossible to respond to emergency calls at the
time.
Mr Monett ultimately made it to dialysis after climbing through the snow and having neighbors help dig out his buried vehicle, sister Maria Monett said.
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