It’s not the first time that our Sunday observations turn to the Politics of Snow.
Back in 2014, the Politics Column dwelled on another November storm that swept through our area, and like in recent days, was measured in feet and not inches. It examined the six consecutive days that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent in Buffalo monitoring state and local snow-fighting efforts. Cuomo may have been at his gubernatorial best when taking command of disaster situations. Donning his official governor jacket and conducting regular briefings in front of Thruway plows (we still wonder why those vehicles weren’t out there plowing), Cuomo kept Western New Yorkers informed while marshaling the vast powers of the state.
Now a new governor named Kathy Hochul wears the official jacket. She also stationed herself at the Thruway Authority’s Walden Avenue garage to deliver the same reassurances. Now state, county and local officials have generally received at least passing grades for guiding the area through a devastating snow dump that in places measured almost 7 feet.
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Hochul must have taken notes at Cuomo’s side during her lieutenant governor days. Now she notes the lessons learned from previous experience.
“We’ve brought ... resources, people, equipment from all over the State of New York,” Hochul said during her Nov. 19 briefing. “And because we were so pre-emptive in this strike, we were able to avert many tragedies. And we know that from having gone through countless snowstorms, not all of this magnitude, but many very serious in the past.”
The results were clear. In 2014, 14 people died in the big November storm. Some froze to death in stranded cars. In 2022, the area lost only three of its citizens to heart attacks. In 2014, hundreds of motorists spent overnights and longer stuck on an unplowed Thruway. In 2022, the Thruway closed, most Western New Yorkers heeded driving bans, and far fewer stranded vehicles resulted. Lessons learned from 2014 worked in 2022.
And even as plows were still attacking the mountains of snow in Hamburg and Orchard Park, the White House responded on Monday with an emergency declaration that took weeks to obtain in 2014.
In one of the nation’s snowiest locales, politicians finally seem to “get” the Politics of Snow. Many old-timers say then-Mayor Stan Makowski declined another term because of lingering and widespread outrage over city response to the Blizzard of '77 – the granddaddy of all Buffalo storms. A state senator named Jim Griffin made hay out of snow that election year, promised better results, and won four terms as mayor of Buffalo.
Cuomo recognized it. Now Hochul does too. As a Buffalo resident, it didn’t take much for her to understand.
Ditto for County Executive Mark Poloncarz. He directed Erie County’s battle against the 2014 onslaught, and maybe as much as anyone, applied the lessons of that year to 2022.
This time, he notes, municipalities ordered driving bans even before the first flake fell – discouraging the stranded vehicles of previous storms. They consulted National Weather Service experts and better coordinated with state and local responders, while private contractors were on standby.
“Last time we had 14 deaths. A few were from cardiac arrests but people died in their cars and in car accidents,” he said last week. “This time we were able to avoid accidents and people in their cars because we had an all-points bulletin out there.
“Somebody driving home eight years ago might have gotten stuck,” he added. “That just didn’t happen this time to a large degree because we got the information out there sooner.”
Not everything went smoothly. Big trucks diverted off the Thruway clogged parallel routes. And some side street residents have yet to see a plow.
But Poloncarz is gearing up to run for an unprecedented fourth term as county executive next year. And it’s a sure bet a TV spot will feature the incumbent in official county executive jacket taking command against the Big Lake-Effect Snowstorm of '22. It’s all part of the Politics of Snow.