Erie County released 50 pages of post-blizzard reports that examine the challenges it faced during the Christmas week blizzard that left 46 county residents dead.
In response to a Freedom of Information Law request regarding any Erie County post-blizzard analysis or reports, County Attorney Jeremy Toth has said the county intends to provide The Buffalo News redacted versions of department analyses.
The analysis reports, created by department heads, recount how administrators struggled to meet public needs in the face of overwhelming demands. Many of the reports referred to the county’s swamped 716-858-SNOW line, which was not designed to field thousands of emergency calls in such a short period.
Other issues ranged from the inability for personnel to recall how to use the county’s emergency software system to the inadequacy of the county’s mass fatality plan to cope with the magnitude of deaths.
The post-blizzard reports were released by the County Attorney’s Office, and posted to the department’s website Friday, after the county initially declined to provide them to the public, stating that they were internal documents. The Buffalo News filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the records early last week, after both the City of Buffalo and New York State…
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