In Buffalo, Even the Rescuers Needed Rescuing

nytimes: Trapped inside his Kia Sedona with his four young children as a blizzard raged outside, Zila Santiago frantically called 911, the National Guard and friends for help, but none came. The emergency responders, too, were mired in snowdrifts, even as they attempted rescues.

For 11 long, dark hours over Christmas Eve, Santiago and his family sat in their minivan after getting stuck in a snowbank at Alabama and Fulton streets in Buffalo, New York. Although the county had put a driving ban in place, Santiago, a single father, was on the road because he said he couldn’t afford to leave his children overnight with their babysitter. “I was basically just hopeless,” he said.

He burned gas to keep the children — ages 2 through 6 — warm and served them juice he found stashed in the trunk. He helped his boys relieve themselves in a bottle, and he hid his distress by entertaining them with games and a TV installed in the vehicle.

“I have been through bad storms before,” said Santiago, 30, at home in Lackawanna after the family was rescued at about 5 a.m. Sunday by a passing snowplow. “But this is not something that I’ve been through or experienced in my lifetime.”

The Santiagos were among thousands of residents of western New York whose Christmas holidays were disrupted — sometimes perilously — by the enormous storm that left 4 feet of snow in Buffalo before moving south Sunday. Even in a region known for fierce winter weather, the blizzard left Buffalo especially paralyzed, with rescue workers themselves stranded in ambulances and other emergency vehicles across the city.

The death toll across Erie and Niagara counties rose to 17 on Sunday, and officials said that tally was likely to rise. In Erie, the youngest victim was 26; the oldest was 93.

On Sunday evening, Gov. Kathy Hochul described the blizzard as an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime storm,” and county officials cautioned that more snow and wind was expected Monday and Tuesday.

State emergency responders have assisted in nearly 500 rescues, including helping to deliver a baby, officials said Sunday evening. County officials put out a call for volunteers to help — and a request that they provide their own snowmobiles. Buffalo Niagara International Airport announced it would be shut down until Tuesday morning, and thousands of customers across the region remained without power and heat.

Western New York bore the brunt of the holiday storm, but other parts of the country were also dealing with downed power lines and bitter cold that scrambled travel plans. More than 3,000 flights were canceled, and there were over 9,500 delays reported Sunday, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks airline schedules. Power was out for tens of thousands of customers from Appalachia to Maine.

In Buffalo, with professional rescuers slow to arrive, and shelters often unreachable, residents improvised. A restaurant became a hotel, bunking stranded people atop the bar. Doctors and nurses interrupted Christmas celebrations to make house calls. A couple took in a busload of Korean tourists who cooked Christmas Eve dinner. A tow-truck driver helped deliver lifesaving medicine.

Blizzard Facebook groups popped up overnight, with stranded residents begging for help. More than one family sought out a midwife to coach a pregnant woman through labor. Christopher Pulinski put out a call for help reuniting with his 17-year-old son, stuck home alone in the neighborhood of Elmwood Village. A stranger with a snowmobile replied that he was on his way.

On Christmas morning, Chris Giardina, 43, who owns Jardys Towing & Recovery in Buffalo, received an urgent call from a woman stuck in a snowbank in the middle of a median along Main Street in front of Sisters of Charity Hospital, where she had just picked up insulin for her husband.

“She called me panicking,” said Giardina, who had planned to take the holiday off. He revved up his tow truck and pulled her as close to home as he could get through roads nearly impassable with snow, he said.

“She does not have any power,” Giardina added. “But the main thing is he’s got his insulin.”

Nearly three days after the blizzard began, people remained stuck in cars on highways and on side streets in Buffalo, officials said.

“We had to save firemen, we had to save police officers, we had to save EMTs,” Mark C. Poloncarz, the Erie County executive, said at a news conference Sunday morning. He noted that overnight Saturday more than 50 rescues were made by a specialized team, many of which included rescues of other emergency workers. “When the rescuers have to be rescued, I’m not certain what else we could have done.”

Leon Horace Miller, 52, of Buffalo, transformed his landscaping and snow plow company into a rescue operation. By late afternoon on Christmas Day he had dislodged 14 people from snow banks or moved them out of unheated homes that had lost power. “It’s been nonstop since Friday,” Miller said. “Everyone knows I have big trucks.”

Health care workers posted their locations and phone numbers online in hopes that those in need nearby would find them. At 2 a.m. Sunday, Tamara Joy Rettino, an alternative medicine doctor, fielded a call from a mother whose asthmatic child was struggling to breathe.

“My motivation was just to be able to offer that service to hopefully save some lives and bring some calm in a situation where really there were no other options,” she said.

On Sunday morning, Poloncarz sent out a call for civil servants and health care workers to relieve their colleagues, some of whom had been working for 48 hours straight, even though it was the holiday.

“The staff are tired and exhausted and would like to be able to go home,” said Erin Spaulding, a spokesperson for the CWA Staff Union, which represents nurses at area hospitals.

But many would-be volunteers said still impassable roads made coming to work impossible.

Nate Marton, the commissioner of the Buffalo Department of Public Works, slept in his clothes in his office inside City Hall on Friday and Saturday, he said, as he oversaw crews digging out roads so electrical workers could repair power lines. Stymying the return of power was the fact that some substations were frozen, he said, requiring workers with heaters to go in to melt the frost.

In the small community of Basom, a restaurant became a makeshift refuge for 115 stranded passersby and four dogs for two days, said Joe Bradt, the general manager. “We made an instantaneous decision that we were going to become a shelter.”

People slept wherever they could, he said: on chairs, on floors and on the bar of the establishment, the Alabama Hotel, which despite its name is not — in normal times — a hotel. Neighbors and local businesses donated supplies, an outpouring of support that made the mood, despite the storm, “ecstatic,” he said.

“It’s been an emotional last two days,” Bradt said.

Perhaps the most unlikely blizzard development occurred when Alexander and Andrea Campagna answered a knock at their door Friday. Outside were nine Korean tourists on their way from Washington, D.C., to Niagara Falls, whose tour bus was stuck in the snow in front of their house.

The Campagnas quickly invited them in, which is how they found themselves eating jeyuk bokkeum, a Korean stir-fried pork dish, prepared by some of their guests, on Christmas Eve. The visitors were delighted to discover that the couple, fans of Korean food, had all the traditional ingredients on hand.

On Christmas evening, drivers finally arrived to pick up the tourists, who included college students, a student’s parents and even a young newlywed couple on their honeymoon. They were headed to New York City with plans to then fly home. Had they stayed one more night in Buffalo, beef bulgogi was on the menu.

“We have enjoyed this so much,” said Campagna, who said he now plans to visit South Korea.

On Sunday afternoon, as residents and emergency service workers pitched in to help each other dig out, Carmen Spataro, 28, drove his ATV up and down Hertel Avenue, a normally busy shopping area, seeking milk and diapers for his two young children and growing increasingly desperate as he found all the stores closed.

Yet, after a few laps, Spataro got the supplies he needed: A stranger put a box of diapers in his hands.

Christine Chung, Ava Sasani, Eduardo Medina and Robert Chiarito contributed reporting.