NY.- Stuck in her car as a blinding snowstorm engulfed Buffalo, New York, 22-year-old Anndel Nicole Taylor sent a text message to her family telling them she was scared. The young woman herself had called emergency services for hours, but they kept putting her on hold.
At midnight, with 48 inches of snow piling up on the ground and his car still stuck, he told his family he would try to get some sleep.
“That was the last time we spoke to her,” lamented her older sister, Shawnequa Renee Brown, 35, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Taylor was found dead in her car on Christmas Eve.
As a Certified Nursing Assistant, Taylor moved to Buffalo from Charlotte two years ago to care for her ailing father. On Christmas Day, the family reunited in North Carolina, grieving in what should have been a celebration. Taylor’s presents were under the tree, still wrapped.
“It was just a crying day,” Brown sobbed. “All day, we just cried.”
In western New York, the death toll from the harsh winter storm continued to rise four days after snowfall began Friday; Nearly 30 people were reported dead after the Buffalo Mayor reported eight more dead Tuesday morning.
Even as the rescue effort continued, officials and emergency workers were reeling from what they called an extraordinary challenge to save people in this record-setting blizzard for its duration (36 hours straight).
In Charlotte, Taylor’s sister was making funeral plans and taking refuge in her favorite memories of Taylor, including how her younger sister sang the chorus to her favorite song, “Bless-Sin” by Juiicy 2xs, and how easily made friends.
“She’ll meet them once and now they’ll be friends forever,” Brown said. “She was the stronghold of the family.”
On social media, some residents have criticized the storm’s response. They have called it slow and are particularly angry with officials who they believe suggested that those who were trapped or died while waiting for rescue that never came were partly to blame.
Mayor Byron Brown disputed those allegations.
“We’re certainly not blaming the people who were driving,” he clarified. “But the act of driving during a blizzard with zero visibility and blackout conditions, as you might guess, made emergency response much more difficult and much more complicated.”
Even as residents were warned to stay home, Abdul Sharifu was among those who took the risk.
On Saturday, with his pregnant wife due to give birth next week, Sharifu, 26, ventured out in his car to do the shopping, despite her warning him not to.
On Monday, a friend at John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital identified the body of Sharifu, a Congolese refugee who fled the war in 2017 and settled in Buffalo.
His car had been found on Saturday, abandoned at the corner of Principal and Útica streets; His friends believe that he got stuck and tried to walk home.
Sharifu was known by the nickname “911” for his giving nature and propensity to drop everything to help others in need in his close-knit community of people who identify as members of the Bafuliru tribal group, Rushikana said. He was delighted to become the father of a son.
“He’s his first child,” said Rushikana, who considered Sharifu a nephew. “He was very excited.”
On Saturday, Christmas Eve, a disturbing video of a body apparently frozen in a snowbank began to circulate. It appeared to be William Clay, who called himself Romello, according to a GoFundMe for funeral expenses set up by his sister, Sophia Clay. On that day, she wrote, he would have turned 56.
Monique Alexander, 52, a part-time home health aide and part-time hotel housekeeper, was also found buried in the snow on Delaware Avenue that day, according to her daughter, Casey Maccarone.
“He was the most outgoing person I knew,” Maccarone said. “She was loyal to everyone she knew.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office announced the identity of another victim: Timothy Murphy, 27, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning on Christmas Day after heavy snow clogged the outdoor oven at his residence in Lockport, New York.
Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday in Buffalo, a city of 275,000 along Lake Erie. Some 4,000 people were still without power, according to the mayor’s office, and the community feared the death toll would rise as emergency workers reached more stranded vehicles and homes without power.
An additional 3 to 5 inches of snow were expected in the region, according to the National Weather Service.
There were reports of some looting incidents. Carl Anderson Jr., 59, the owner of Louie’s Texas Red Hots restaurant on Bailey Avenue, said he spent Christmas Day holed up in his house, watching live security footage of his restaurant as four men broke down the door and dragged a cash register and a snow safe.
Powerless to stop them, he called the police five times, but they did not come to the scene. “This is killing me financially,” he said.
Anderson shared the video with The New York Times.
“We have already made a number of arrests and will be very aggressively focused on pursuing crime looting during these blizzard conditions,” Brown told a news conference.
The travel ban that was put in place when the blizzard began remained in effect for Buffalo Tuesday, though it was reduced to a notice in the nearby community of Cheektowaga, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced.
The volume of snow was impossible to remove. It had to be picked up by dump trucks and transported. Buffalo Niagara International Airport and all county offices in Erie remained closed Tuesday. The airport will reopen late Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced more support for people in Western New York, including waiving ATM fees and increasing cash withdrawal limits, as well as measures to expedite insurance claims. .
