BUFFALO, N.Y. — A report about the record breaking lake effect snowstorm that hit Buffalo and Western New York on November 18, and the city's response to it, was sent to members of the Buffalo Common Council on Tuesday just prior to the start of their regular meeting.
The report from the Mayor's office says the city removed an estimated 8,000,000 pounds (4,000 tons) of snow from the storm, which it says, if dumped on single football field, would create a snow pile 1,088.5' in height...or more than or twice as high as Buffalo's tallest building, the Seneca One tower.
Removing it was costly.
According to an internal email sent by the city's senior operations engineer, the tab from all those private contractors the city hired to plow and remove snow was nearly $1 million, and on Tuesday the Common Council members approved transferring more than $700,000 from other lines in the city budget in order to pay them.
The report indicates the city used 3,000 tons of salt during the storm... that 175 cars were towed which were blocking crews from clearing streets, and that during the portions of the storm when a driving ban was in effect, 7,000 vehicles were stopped by police, who it appears were giving mostly warnings, as only 90 tickets were issued.
During the five days of the storm and the subsequent cleanup, there were nearly 4,800 calls to the city's 3-1-1 non emergency number. As one might guess, the lion's share of those were requests from residents to get their streets plowed.
The report also addressed, briefly, the failure of the public facing GPS system that was supposed to tell people if their street had been plowed. However, as far as what happened, the report only says an update of the investigation into the matter will be "forthcoming".