BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — When the Blizzard of '22 swept through Western New York, roads were closed for days. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority suspended bus routes and shut down the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. On Thursday, the NFTA Board of Commissioners was debriefed on each department's storm experience.
"The challenges that we know that day was the storm itself," Fire Chief William Major said.
BNIA canceled flights from December 23-28th. During the blizzard, crews could barely see the airfield.
"We went from trying to keep the runways open on the 23rd to just working on life safety," Lee Weitz, director of aviation said.
The airport and surrounding facilities soon became a safe haven for 141 people and one dog who were all nearby during the whiteout conditions. Some even got stuck in the tunnel on Aero Drive. Emergency crews said they went through extensive measures to save those people.
"And what we did to guide ourselves was took the road flares, we lit it, and we put it every eight to 10 feet in the snow bank and we created this path of light all the way to the tunnel," Police Capt. Louis Loubert with the NFTA said.
Assistant Fire Chief Joel Eberth recounted his crew's experience rescuing people near the airport.
"it was zero visibility for us to go out there. It was difficult to breathe. It was difficult to see, but we knew we had to go out and assist the people who were out there," he said.
Above all, Loubert said he is thankful no one died.
"And that's a testament to the first responders in the field and the airport personnel," he said.
The director of government affairs for NFTA said because of the blizzard, the airport lost $2.6 million in costs and revenue. For the NFTA's metro, $265,400 was lost in costs and revenues.
Despite this, Jeffrey Richardson, president of the Local 1342 Transit Union, said on the metro side of things, there was very little communication.
"Our members didn't know what was going on. Our members were put in harm's way to have to come to work on that Monday the day after Christmas when they said no service was gonna be moving at all, but yet you still, our members were getting stranded and they were getting stuck," Richardson said.
Richardson said they are losing people and morale is low.
"You don't feel appreciated. This was one time you could have appreciated everybody to make sure everybody got paid what they deserve," he added.
He said when members came into work during the storm, there was no food available. He said some of the food was a year old.
"They had no food at the stations. The people had nothing to eat," he said.
NFTA's communications manager, Kelly Khatib, responded in a statement saying:
We are so proud of our entire workforce here at the NFTA who are responsible for saving the lives of 141 people, and stayed with the many people who took emergency shelter at our many facilities that we opened to the public. We appreciate the willingness of our essential workers who came in to help restore our operations as quickly as possible.
