On the third day of post-blizzard recovery efforts Tuesday, the signs of progress came.
The Thruway reopened. So did grocery stores. Metro Rail service resumed. Those who live on side streets saw front-loaders plow at least a single lane past their homes.
"It's good news. What can you say?" said Kevin Blair, who lives on Tacoma Avenue, as a front loader moved snow off his residential street.
Even with 268 pieces of equipment active to clear main and residential streets, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said it would take two days to open a single lane on every city street.
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Given the rising death toll, the thousands still without power and police looking for looters, even those whose streets had not been plowed kept perspective amid the sobering news still coming off of the blizzard.
"We haven't seen a single plow the entire time," said Alicia Blodgett, a Parkside Avenue resident and among those who did not lose power during the blizzard. "Parkside is always prioritized. This time, it's my hope they're prioritizing the places in the city that don't have power."
More than 3,900 households in Erie County remained without electricity Tuesday afternoon, including almost 2,700 in Buffalo.
Makeshift sign put up at Starin and Parkside avenues to warn traffic off an unplowed city street.
The city remained under a driving ban, the last municipality with a travel ban in place, while the rest of Erie County remains under a travel advisory.
The mainline Thruway opened, and Interstate 290 and routes 400 and 219 are also now open. The I-190 in Erie County remains closed.
Becoming apparent will be government officials' efforts to control traffic while they continue to plead with drivers to stay off the roads in Buffalo: One-hundred military police from the National Guard, along with state troopers from other parts of the state, will be stationed at entrances to the city and at major intersections "not allowing people to get through," Poloncarz said.
Poloncarz said they're needed "to manage traffic control because it has become so evident that too many people are ignoring the ban."
Clearing snow from the city's 800 miles of streets won't happen quickly, Buffalo Department of Public Works Commissioner Nathan Marton said.
"This is a long, slow process – not a quick call," Marton said.
Front loaders became the key pieces of snow-removal equipment in the city's campaign to clear residential streets in the days following the 2022 blizzard.
The removal leaned away from plows, and more toward front loaders picking up snow and dropping it into dump trucks, which were then bound for four dumping sites spread throughout the city.
While emergency response officials continue to work to clear roads, the death toll continues to mount.
More people in Western New York have died due to this storm than died as a result of the Blizzard of '77.
The County Medical Examiner's Office has confirmed 28 storm-related deaths, Poloncarz said.
Poloncarz announced three new storm-related deaths Tuesday, but said the overall death toll rose by only one. That's because two deaths in Cheektowaga, initially thought to be storm-related, have been found to be unrelated to the storm, he said.
"They were medical conditions that were not saveable," the Medical Examiner's Office has determined, according to Poloncarz.
Poloncarz also previously announced two deaths in Amherst, one death in Depew and another in Williamsville. Niagara County officials announced that the lone fatality there was the result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Earlier Tuesday, a City of Buffalo spokesman said there have been 27 storm-related deaths in the city alone.
Mayor Byron W. Brown said during a briefing that Buffalo's toll had grown by one to 28.
President Biden has authorized a federal emergency declaration for Erie and Genesee counties, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Tuesday.
The move allows federal disaster relief funds to help pay for storm response and recovery.
It also allows FEMA to coordinate disaster relief efforts and provide assistance.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Tuesday that his team was working through a backlog of 1,000 unanswered calls dating to Friday night. He cited issues with the department's computer system due to volume, but also that many officers were forced to leave their vehicles due to the blizzard and were instead walking stranded people to safety. He said his department's Ford Explorer SUVs could not handle conditions in which city plows and Ford F-350s were getting stuck.
"We were shut down," Gramaglia said. "It was absolute gridlock, snowed in and we couldn't drive anymore. It was demoralizing."
Gramaglia announced the assembly of an "anti-looting detail," a small police force geared toward identifying the burglars and vandals from what Gramaglia called "opportunistic" crimes at several sites in the city. Among the sites that were looted were reportedly a Dollar General, the Broadway Market and a 7-Eleven. He said the force had made four arrests in the hour preceding the 11 a.m. news conference.
Gramaglia said that the incidents of looting were not for necessities such as food and diapers, but to destroy property and take items such as couches.
"You're destroying your community. It will not be tolerated," Gramaglia said. "We've made it a priority to each of our district detectives. We will put your face on TV."
The commissioner added that there were more than a dozen other natural deaths, too, which were counted separately from the storm-related deaths.
The only storm-related death confirmed outside Erie County happened in Niagara County, where a 27-year-old Lockport man was found dead Sunday from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, the Niagara County Sheriff's Office reported. He was identified Tuesday by the Sheriff's Office as Timothy M. Murphy. A woman in the home, Kathy D. Murphy, remained in intensive care at Mount St. Mary's.
The Erie County Sheriff's Office did plenty of planning in advance of the storm, and there have been no fatalities reported in the portions of the county the agency covers, Sheriff John Garcia said.
Garcia said even though the area regularly handles serious winter storms, conditions during the points in the storm created zero visibility and rendered some first responders helpless to go out for first aid calls.
"I've never seen anything like this before," he said.
He said some response improvements to be made include more equipment and "better" equipment.
"We never thought that it was going to be as bad as it was," Garcia said. "So do we have to get better? Absolutely."
The weather forecast for coming days, with rain and temperatures above freezing – including two days with highs expected in the 50s – is causing a bit of concern about flooding for county emergency response officials.
The primary focus remains to remove snow "curb to curb" to allow snowmelt to drain properly, County Emergency Services Commissioner Daniel Neaverth Jr. said.
"We're a little bit concerned about it, obviously, but we are going to do whatever we need to do to address that as it comes," Neaverth said.
Reach Aaron at abesecker[at]buffnews.com or 716-849-4602.
