US buried under snow: Hospitals filled with dead and injured – Fears of flooding in the coming days

North America continues to suffer from the historic snowfall that “hit” the days of Christmas, upsetting the plans of millions of citizens and leaving behind dozens of dead, at least 60 in total.

As Buffalo, New York was the one that took the biggest hit, since at least 34 people diedrescue crews continue to search for survivors or victims under the snow that has covered everything.

NEW VIDEO: Snow drifts are reaching the height of SUVs in the Buffalo area as this historic blizzard gradually winds down. Some cars have been abandoned in the middle of roads during the height of the lake-effect snowstorm. #NYwx #snow pic.twitter.com/0v90aofgsX

— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) December 25, 2022

“We have so much many corpses that various hospitals are full and we just have to go through and determine if the individuals died of a blizzard-related death,” Erie County Sheriff Mark Poloncarz told CNN.

For many Buffalo residents, driving bans remain in some areas and many convenience stores remain closed, preventing residents from traveling to safer areas. National Weather Service (NWS) chief meteorologist Bob Oravec said if there is more snow in Buffalo it will have a big impact as it will be more difficult to remove the existing snow that has fallen.

Rising temperatures and fears of flooding

At the same time, there are fears that the storm that hit Buffalo is not over and there is a “strong increase in moisture” that is now threatening to cause flash flooding in parts of the Pacific Northwest and California.

“These are probably the last snows”, according to Oravets, who assures that the temperature will rise gradually: “From Thursday it will rise to 8°C and on Saturday it will reach 12°C”. It was still bitterly cold in many parts of New York today, with the mercury reading -2°C.

Late Monday, Poloncarz warned: “This is not the end yet.” He said the storm was “probably the worst storm in our lifetime,” even for an area accustomed to heavy snowfall off the Great Lakes.

Fourteen deaths had been attributed to extreme cold, Poloncarz said. “I just have to express my deepest condolences to those who have lost a loved one to this horrible situation,” he said.

According to the New York Times, more than 30 deaths due to the severe weather have been reported in Erie and Niagara counties. Some victims were trapped in their cars for hours, others suffered heart attacks trying to shovel snow. Anndel Taylor, 22, died after being trapped in her car for 18 hours. However, before she died she exchanged a series of videos with her sisters in North Carolina, the New York Post reported. In the latest video, Taylor rolled down one of her windows to show a nearby van that was also trapped.

Erie County has warned residents that exhaustion from shoveling snow can cause back injuries or even a heart attack.

Problems with electricity and water supply

Crews are working feverishly to restore power in areas where outages occurred. An estimated 122,000 households remain without power nationwide (up from 1.8 million on Saturday), according to the specialist website PowerOutage.us. Over 72% of these are located in Oregon and California.

Water outages were reported in Atlanta and Jackson, Mississippi, due to broken pipes.

Southwest flight cancellations under investigation

Across the U.S., about 3,410 domestic and international flights were canceled Monday, according to the tracking website FlightAware. Some of the airports where there were cancellations were Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago. Buffalo Niagara International Airport is scheduled to remain closed through Wednesday.

The website said Southwest Airlines had 2,497 cancellations, about 60 percent of scheduled flights and about 10 times more than any other major U.S. carrier. That’s why in Washington, the US Department of Transportation said it would look into the company’s cancellations that left travelers stranded across the country because the cancellation rate was “disproportionate and unacceptable,” it said. At the same time, cancellation rates on American, United, Delta and JetBlue ranged from none to just 2%.

Southwest spokesman Jay McVeigh said at a news conference in Houston that the cancellations came as systems showed the storm had moved across the country, stranding crews and planes. Passengers were forming huge queues trying to rebook tickets for their flights.

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