The worst snow and wind storm in recent decades ends in the United States with fifty deaths and the memory of a Christmas in which many could not meet with their loved ones to celebrate the holidays.
The bomb cyclone, which even on Monday kept thermometers across the country below zero, forced the cancellation of more than 16,600 flights since Thursday, which means that hundreds of thousands of people saw their vacations ruined.
More than half of the fatalities from the so-called explosive cyclogenesis, baptized on this occasion as Elliot storm, were registered in the northwest of the state of New York. There, the death toll rose to 27 yesterday, some of whom appeared trapped in their vehicles while others were found in the middle of the street or in their homes.
The situation, however, began to improve yesterday as temperatures recovered; especially in electrical service. The number of users without electricity due to blackouts due to the storm had dropped yesterday, however, to less than 200,000: nothing to do with the 1.6 million on Saturday.
Over the weekend, the operator of the Atlantic network had asked its 65 million consumers to save energy and avoid the use of large appliances in order to prevent major outages. Maybe the effort was worth it. There were, however, those who acted against it, since the damage caused by the storm was added to those caused by the hand of man. In the state of Washington, one of the hardest hit, police yesterday were investigating an attack on four electrical substations that left more than 17,000 people without power on Christmas Day. They were acts of vandalism at the hands of "unidentified individuals" who at different times on Sunday entered the substations, jumping over the fences to destroy the equipment and in some cases set it on fire. Until yesterday there were no detainees.
The United States will return to normal as of today after six days of Christmas nightmare in which around 60% of the population of the United States was affected in one way or another by what some media called "a once-in-a-generation storm." ”, extended from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told NPR that his city's emergency services had gone "drive by drive" to perform hundreds of rescues of stranded motorists on local and surrounding roads in the western part of the state. New Yorker. The region recorded copious rainfall that, with up to 1.20 meters of snow, made transit completely impossible. Governor Kathy Hochul said that almost all of the fire trucks in the city of Buffalo had been stuck in the middle of gigantic snowdrifts.
Canada also suffered the consequences of the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in Ontario and Quebec, and passenger train service between Toronto and Ottawa was suspended. In the province of British Columbia, four people were killed and 53 injured in an icy bus accident on Saturday night.
It's been a tough Christmas across North America, who can look forward to a better New Year.
