More than 50 killed in road accidents linked to 'war zone' freeze sweeping America
24 December 2022, 10:36 | Updated: 26 December 2022, 15:30
More than fifty people have been killed in incidents linked to a huge winter storm that has sent temperatures plummeting across the US and Canada.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
The death toll crossed 50 this afternoon after four deaths in a bus crash in British Columbia, Canada.
Snow-hit Buffalo in New York state has been hardest hit, suffering its worst ever conditions.
Eighteen people in the state have died.
Governor Kathy Hochul has deployed the national guard to fight the Arctic freeze, while authorities said emergency services in the city were "not functioning".
She said: "This is a war with mother nature and she has been hitting us with everything she has.
"It is [like] going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking."
Several of those who have died were caught up in car crashes as vehicles skidded into major pile-ups in the states of Ohio and Kansas, while a utility worker also died trying to restore power after an outage.
A 51-year-old woman in Vermont was killed when a tree fell on her in her garden.
The storm, which arrived earlier this week, has brought down power lines and caused widespread flight cancellations.
The icy blast is nearly unprecedented in sheer size, stretching from the northern border all the way to the south of the country, from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande by Mexico.
About 60% of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted well below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
Freezing rain coated much of the Pacific Northwest in a layer of ice, while people in the north east faced the threat of coastal and inland flooding.
The frigid temperatures and gusty winds were expected to produce "dangerously cold wind chills across much of the central and eastern US this holiday weekend", the weather service said, adding that conditions "will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travellers that become stranded".
"In some areas, being outdoors could lead to frostbite in minutes," it said.
Late on Friday power outages were still affecting more than a million homes and businesses, according to the website PowerOutage, which tracks utility reports.
As millions of Americans were travelling ahead of Christmas, more than 5,700 flights were cancelled on Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Multiple roads were closed and crashes killed at least six people, officials said.
At least two people died in a massive pile-up involving 50 vehicles on the Ohio Turnpike.
A Kansas City driver was killed on Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died on Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.
In Canada, WestJet cancelled all flights on Friday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, as meteorologists warned of a potential once-in-a-decade weather event.
In Mexico, migrants camped near the US border in unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.
Shelagh Fogarty: 'Why does a bit of snow so easily cause mayhem?'
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone - when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm - had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
Even people in Florida were braced for unusually chilly weather as rare freeze warnings were issued for large parts of the state over the holiday weekend.
Calling it a "kitchen sink storm", New York governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency. In parts of New York City, tidal flooding inundated roads, homes and businesses on Friday.
In Boston, rain combined with a high tide flooded some central streets on Friday.
