BUFFALO, N.Y. — Erie County's main message is if it gets bad out, don’t go out unless you absolutely have to.
The county has 32 plows and other trucks ready to hit the roads.
But as we’ve seen in the past, problems happen when people go out when they should just stay home.
"We can handle snow in this region. We know we can handle snow in this region. We’ve had bigger storms than what’s projected for this, but it’s rare that we have actually as big a projection as we’re going to see for the first snowfall of the year," said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.
There is a conference call between Erie County and mayors and town supervisors scheduled for Wednesday, and they’ll be in constant contact during the storm.
2 On Your Side asked about staffing, and the Erie County DPW Commissioner said that they are in good shape and have 71 plow drivers working split shifts to cover the storm.
“We’re fortunate we have 71 out of the 80. We always have a typical slinky effect on some retirements and people scheduled off. There are no scheduled vacations during this period, so we’re good. But we have other resources within the department also to pull mechanics if we need or supervisors into the driving, but we should have more than enough staff on hand for this,” said William Geary, Erie County DPW Commissioner.
There is also a way to check the roads online.
“So if you’re not familiar with NITTEC, it’s NITTEC.org. We have a mobile app and a website. There’s over one-hundred streaming cameras on our website to see what’s going on on the expressway network throughout the region. That’s available to the public to see what’s going on. And as they mentioned, it might be snowing in one area, not snowing in the other. You can get an indication of what’s going on based on what's showing on our cameras on our website,” said NITTEC Executive Director Athena Hutchins.
Erie County also has plenty of salt - more than 14,000 tons - and really haven’t had to use much of it yet this season at all.