A 22-year-old student nurse killed in the blizzard that hammered Buffalo, New York, sent videos to her family while she was trapped in her vehicle before she was found dead about a day later, family members revealed.
“I feel like everybody that tried to get to her got stuck,” Tomeshia Brown, her sister, told the ABC affiliate station. “Fire department, police, everybody got stuck.”
And Wanda Brown Steele, her mother, told WSOC that her daughter was going to walk after sleeping in her vehicle and believes her cause of death, in part, was due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
“I don’t know if any of us really knew how serious it was, we didn’t see the news, we didn’t really know what was going on in Buffalo,” said Shawnequa Brown, Taylor’s sister. Family members said that Anndel was sending them videos of snow piling up next to her car and was in communication with them before her death, adding that she called 911 but first responders could not get to her.
So far, about three dozen people died in Buffalo during the blizzard, which local officials say was the worst to hit the western New York region in decades.
“We are currently trying to put Services together to say our final goodbyes,” it says. “We are truly in need of emotional and financial help to complete the task at hand and with heavy hearts we are reaching out to all of you to assist us.”
Several days later, other family members alleged that local officials were not prepared and criticized the response.
Smith said that after Taylor called them, she and her son attempted to dig out her vehicle from the snow but to no avail.
“We just could not dig it out,” Smith said. “It was like as soon as we dig one spot out, the next spot is just covered.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced a state of emergency would take effect for all of New York state due to the snowstorm. Family members told the Post that Taylor left the hospital shift 20 minutes earlier to try and escape the storm.
Officials said more than 30 people so far have been reported to have died because of the blizzard that raged Friday and Saturday in western New York, an area prone to powerful winter storms. The historic blizzard of 1977 killed as many as 29.
Temperatures were expected to rise into the mid-40s on Wednesday and the low 50s by Friday, the National Weather Service said.
With enough snow still on the ground that driving was still banned in New York’s second-most-populous city, officials worked to clear storm drains and watched a forecast that calls for some rain later in the week. Officials in Erie County, which encompasses Buffalo, said Tuesday they were concerned about the possibility of flooding.
The weather service said Wednesday that “any flooding is expected to be of the minor or nuisance variety.”
While suburban roads and most major highways in the area reopened Tuesday, there was still a driving ban in Buffalo, and state and military police were assigned to enforce it. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a Democrat, said “too many people are ignoring the ban.”
