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Winter weather hits hard in Western New York

in NEWS by

By Hannah Gordon

News Assignment Editor

Residents of western and upstate New York are no strangers to snow. However, as Bonaventure students prepared to travel back to campus during the last week of break, the blizzard of 2014 took over the Western New York region.

The storm was the first Blizzard Warning issued by the National Weather Service since 1993, according to WIVB News. It dropped a foot of snow overnight on Tuesday, Jan. 7, with the greatest amount landing in the areas south of Buffalo. Wind chills dropped to nearly 30 degrees below zero, and driving bans were issued immediately in several cities.

With driving bans in place, some of the affected were forced to cancel plans. Carl Siegel, a freshman political science major from Cheektowaga, N.Y., tried to stay inside for most of the blizzard.

“I really only went out to shovel because the snow was piling up,” Siegel said. “I also had to pick up my car from the auto repair shop. It was cold, snowy, and miserable.”

Lackawanna, the eye of the storm, was the first city to shut down their main roads.

“This is the first time we stuck to our guns and closed our main streets,” said Chris Druzbik, foreman for the department of public works in the City of Lackawanna. “We had to take more safety measures, but we had 10 working pieces of equipment running around the clock.”

Lackawanna had all of it’s snowplow drivers working overtime up to 16 hours.

“The commissioner of public works and I drove around to make sure the plows were keeping the main roads clear and open in case of emergency,” Druzbik said. “The fire department, police, and ambulances need to be able to get through.”
Locals weren’t the only people affected by the storm. Any travelers planning to come into the region, like Bonaventure students, were delayed, some for days.
Nate Discavage, a freshman journalism and mass communication major, was traveling back from visiting his family in Germany when he was caught in the “polar vortex.”
“My initial flight had me traveling from Frankfurt to Dallas, then to Chicago and into Buffalo,” Discavage said. “In Dallas, I found out my flight was canceled, but I could take a flight to Washington, D.C. and arrive in Rochester.”
That plan was short-lived. Within minutes of rescheduling his flight to D.C., it was canceled and Discavage was again rescheduled to fly from Dallas to Philadelphia, then to New York City and finally to Buffalo.
“I arrived in Philly late and had to spend the night sleeping on a bench inside the terminal,” Discavage said. “The next morning, I went to board my flight to New York City, and they told me Delta switched me to Detroit instead.”
Discavage took the flight to Detroit, which resulted in a flight to Atlanta and again a flight to Buffalo. Discavage arrived in Atlanta only to discover that all of the flights to Buffalo had been canceled, and his only hope was to get into Western New York that day was on a Delta flight to Rochester.
“The ticket counter said that American Airlines owned the ‘right to my ticket’ and, although there was room on the flight, I needed paperwork from them to get the ticket,” Discavage said.
After rushing to numerous ticket counters, Discavage got on the flight, but without his luggage.
“They said it would take them about a week to ship my bag up from Atlanta to Buffalo, where they would then mail it to me. Here I am, one week later, still waiting for that bag to get here.”
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