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A FRIGID WINTER storm has killed at least 18 people as it swept across the US, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and leaving millions of people on edge about the possibility of blackouts.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, New York, with hurricane-force winds causing whiteout conditions. Emergency response efforts were paralysed, and the city’s international airport was shut down.
Across the US, officials have attributed deaths to exposure, car crashes, a falling tree limb and other effects of the storm.
At least three people died in the Buffalo area, including two who suffered medical emergencies in their homes and could not be saved because emergency crews were unable to reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.
Deep snow, single-digit temperatures and day-old power outages sent Buffalo residents scrambling yesterday to get out of their houses to anywhere that had heat.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the Buffalo Niagara International Airport would be closed through Monday morning and almost every fire truck in the city was stranded in the snow.
“No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak,” Hochul said.
Blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power in places from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern US that rolling blackouts might be required.
Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection said power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents in 13 states to conserve electricity through to at least Christmas morning.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to 10 million people in the state and parts of six surrounding ones, directed local power companies to implement planned interruptions but ended the measure by yesterday afternoon.
The start of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans’ game in Nashville was delayed an hour by a planned power outage.
Across the six New England states, more than 273,000 customers remained without power on Saturday, with Maine the hardest hit and some utilities saying it could be days before electricity is restored.
In North Carolina, 169,000 customers were without power as of the afternoon, down from a peak of more than 485,000, but utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for “the next few days”.
In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died in their homes on Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz.
He said another person died in Buffalo and said the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history”.
It was taking ambulances over three hours to do one trip to a hospital, Mr Poloncarz said.
Forecasters said 71 centimetres of snow accumulated as of Saturday in Buffalo. Last month, areas just south of the city saw a record six feet of snow (about 1.8 metres) from a single storm.
Plows were on the roads, but large snow drifts, abandoned cars and downed power lines were slowing progress.
On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a pileup involving some 50 vehicles. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver was killed on Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died on Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.
A utility worker in Ohio was also killed on Friday while trying to restore power, according to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative. It said the 22-year-old died in “an electrical contact incident” near Pedro in Lawrence County.
A woman in Vermont died in a hospital on Friday after a tree broke in the high winds and fell on her. Police in Colorado Springs said they found the body of a person who appeared to be homeless as sub-zero temperatures and snow descended on the region.
Near Janesville, Wisconsin, a 57-year-old woman died Friday after falling through the ice on a river, the Rock County Sheriff’s Office announced.
The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
About 60% of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
As millions of Americans were travelling ahead of Christmas, more than 2,360 flights within, into or out of the US were cancelled on Saturday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
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Remember it was germany which was the first country to breach the limit of 3 percent
They were also distinctly unpleasant neighbours to Poland in 1930/40 too!
And they killed millions of jews too!
Not to mention some desperate songs in the Eurovision down the years.
not to mention starting two world wars!
Patrick
It appears as if you don’t particularly like Germans then. However apart from that particularly irrelevant comment is there anything else you might like to add either of relevance of even more intellectual than your first go!
WIR GEHORCHEN!
The IMF, the OECD, the world bank, in fact everyone, are all saying austerity is not working
… all except Frau Merkel, that is – she who must be obeyed.
We spent 800 years wanting independence and the minute we get it, we hand it all over to Germany and the German controlled faceless unelected ECB
sorry she appear to have one hell of any ally among TDs in our Dail who have not yet raised Art 29 5 2 of Bunreacht na H’Eireann to say – we do not approve the agreemnt between minister and Commissioner O Rehn that we will merege Anglo Irish and INBS until it suit u and u consent to it s liquidation
U can see memornadu of understanding on dept of finance webiste. No TD ever asked me in 11 that this merger and approval of EU to liquidation is a platform – did they ask u.
And now it banks back on agenda and the bondholders while credit union looisng 15 million – small deposit and people complaing about preotection of deposit in cyprus.
Grow up . And te your local TD that Govt needed his /her vote to breach that agreement when under consitution his apporval and dail needed for it to be legally binding in the first palce – no ecb gagging the coutnry then for no agreement still in negotiaiton,
Shifting numbers that mean nothing.
Mean nothing? I thought this website was obsessed with our debt levels???
Hey David. Do you think that anyone out with the elite care anymore about deficits? It’s too late for us. Even if we get to the stage when we don’t have a deficit, it will mean nothing to us. The damage for us is permanent. It will take at least 25 years for this country to return to full employment, and in the meantime hundreds of thousands of people are barely surviving. Then you have the younger generation emigrating in their droves. This is the price ordinary Irish people are paying so that the elite can maintain their lavish lifestyles. It’s tantamount to genocide.
For the thousands who have emigrated to England, 7.4% or 7.5% mean nothing
Higgins what?
Closing the deficit is a vital step in lowering unemployment. It’s very difficult for an economy to create jobs when no one has confidence in the public finances.
Rodrigo
You’ve lost the run of yourself with that comment. Just to be a little bit pedantic may I point out that our current emigration figures aren’t remotely near the numbers that left these shores in the eighties. Suggesting that the current economic situation is similar to genocide is completely and totally ludicrous and merely devalues your arguments on any fiscal matters. Much more important is the effect such misrepresentation can have on the minds and emotions of people who are struggling to survive this entrenched period of austerity which would in many respects be worse if the current Programme was not being implemented. In such circumstances we would have no lenders of last resort to the State which would simply collapse to a far greater extent than even that of Greece.
Economic success is as much about sentiment as it is about fiscal performance and the negativity you spew helps to prolong the misery so maybe you will reflect on what is being said before you try to drown me in abuse and inaccuracies.
And how can anyone have confidence in the Dept of Finance when they baldly state …”a deterioration of the debt GDP ratio does not represent a worsening of the fiscal position….” What else does it mean, if not that?
The extra money borrowed this year was borrowed to test our re-entry to the financial markets. Most of it was short term debt that is re-paid in a number of months. The ratio is currently 123% but by year’s end that will be 110%. It’s the difference between the gross and net figures.
Their point is that the money wasn’t borrowed to be spent, it was borrowed just to prove that Ireland can borrow successfully.
What?
O yes and Higgins you never got back to me about what you said earlier about this government being responsible for creating 5000 jobs. as i said 100000 people have emigrated since this government started so if i was to ad that to the live register it be over half a million . So there be a lot more out off work if they did not leave the country . Were is the hundred thousand jobs promised . Now get back to your dog
@ Kevin,
You should really consider joining the greens. There more of an opportunity for you there. Rotor Heads and Flat heads
Quentin. I absolutely stand over my genocide comment. This government are trying everything they possibly can to get rid of the less well off. ( the ordinary people) We are deemed a burden on society, and a hindrance to the elite. They’ve proved this over and over by their policies which take from the poor in order to benefit the rich. They won’t rest until they’ve completely Wiped us out.
@rodrigo you’re spouting empty rhetoric. Go to Rwanda and tell them Ireland is undergoing a genocide and see what they think.
It’s a little known fact that the less well off in society are the ones who use the most public services. Fixing the public finances is the only way to ensure they continue to have this money spent on them.
Dude. Genocide? Seriously? I think you need some more Bacofoil…
It means that the cash difference between what the State spends and the amount it raises in taxation hasn’t got worse even if the debt to GDP ratio has.
Nirvana for the Government is when GDP grows at a much faster rate than the fiscal deficit. That would mean our debt to GDP ratio improves with actually changing anything.
No, read the article. By year end debt to gdp will be 123% not 110% as you claim.
the deficit thats looming on pensions is what is going to finish us off est.130 billion in 4 years time but also the unemployed figures are totally false if you include all that have emegrated and all who have been knocked off the list because their stamps ran out the self employed not allowed claim and the startling figure of 80,000 extra people claiming disabilty you start to get to the true figure of unemployment nearer to 25%
Havnt they heard the austerity policy has been Proven to be flawed so these targets are à nonsense, cop on before you do more damage
If austerity isn’t working, why is our deficit closing faster than predicted?
What Higgins ?
Oh Higgins the blind man can’t see
David. You’re right, our deficit is closing faster than predicted. However, for that to mean anything to ordinary people, it needs to translate into economic growth and money in peoples’ pockets. Austerity does not allow growth and only succeeds in putting money from ordinary peoples’ pockets into the pockets of a minority.
Because GDP is not a true measure of national income
Higgins thinks its just the deficit closing.
For the middle to lower class citizens of Ireland it feel like a noose around our neck thats closing.
@Higgins. I won’t expect any reply from you or your idiots. “the deficit has been reduced” at what cost? The impending sale of bord gais at a knockdown price? How about the destruction of your economy? Oh or the great give away of oilfields? What about the landing of private banking debt on mine and my children’s shoulders?
Wake up and see what’s happening you foolish easily manipulated morons.
Economic growth and prosperity is proceeded by the closing of the deficit. The deficit must be closed or on a certain course to be closed before strong growth can take place in the economy.
@ Kevin,
Page 7 of the dickh*ads Manual ?
Does that include the selling of profitable state assets, and the giveaway of natural resources? Does that make sense Higgins? Or do you just have to agree with whatever that easily wooed fool enda dictates to you?
I beleibe u are f gael man. So wsas I.
Do u forget sir that another term of agreement by Cowen that Irleand will capitalsie banks and downsize them. But that memorandum certainly not working – is it.
We will follow the UK anyway, they bailed out their banks, so did we, they hammered the poor, so did we, and now that they are starting to change tack on austerity, so are we.
We are not independent, we are in thrall to the brits and in hock to the huns.
GDP in Ireland includes MNC profits, which are repatriated out of the country.
That’s great news, why not give yourselves a bonus, an extra month off as you only get 6 months off a year. Then you can increase the social welfare further just to make sure nobody on the dole ever wants to work
We’ve been ‘tricked’ alright. These figures are a nonsense. The austerity is a legal stranglehold on the country, contrived and cruel. We will not come out of this for 15 years and by then, what will be left of our forests, energy resources and our young educated? Thanks to FF and the Greens and subsequently FG/Lab – we are a sold-out basket case. Any green shoots we have will be eaten in desperation.
Bah bah bah. Percents and stats. Bah bah
It’s the debt-to-GDP ratio I would be more concerned about than the deficit. If it continues the way it’s going, we will all be living in penury for the next century and beyond.
That’s what tho plan is Declan get us into such a heavy debt that we’ll NEVER be able to repay.
I love my pug! Hahaha!
ruff ruff
“Higher prefunding for 2014 and 2015″ is that what it sounds like. A mccreevy trick of fiddling the numbers.
Debt to GDP of 123% is unsustainable in a zero to low growth economy.
Even if we temporarily get the exchequer deficit down, by use of measures of crippling austerity, blighting the lives of so many, we won’t sustain the unsupported funding of a debt to GDP ratio of 123% but the idea is that we ignore this fundamental reality.
Paddy thinks that he can walk on water. Paddy can live on nothing.
have your say