Governor Hochul: “It's really been a real coordinated effort, not just with our state assets, but also in great coordination, constant communication with the County Executive, Mark Poloncarz and Mayor Byron Brown and their team. It's been a really well orchestrated event thus far, but still Mother Nature can throw some curve balls and we're always ready for it.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul updated New Yorkers on extreme weather.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Joining us now to talk more about the response from the State is Governor Kathy Hochul. Governor. Good morning. Thank you for taking some time to speak with us on this busy day. First and foremost, let's talk about what your crews are seeing out there.
Governor Hochul: Well, good morning and thank you for your extended coverage of the situation. And because our crews and our entire team really pre-deployed earlier and we had the driving ban, we were able to salt the roads, the thruway has been clear, the major highways are clear, and so as a result, we'll be able to get people up and running again, hopefully later this afternoon. And we'll be giving people updates as to in a couple hours notice of when the driving bans will be lifted. But right now, as people can see, depending on where you are, there's still white out conditions, but the crews are – have been out there intensely and some good reports is that statewide we have 4,000 power outages, but only about 160 are in the Western New York area, which is quite extraordinary.
And that's a result of us having the utility crews come much earlier pre-positioned and be able to restore power to people literally within a few hours with just a few exceptions. So overall, between the plows, our state police have been out there enforcing the driving ban to make sure people are safe and the utility teams.
It's really been a real coordinated effort, not just with our state assets, but also in great coordination, constant communication with the County Executive, Mark Poloncarz and Mayor Byron Brown and their team. It's been a really well orchestrated event thus far, but still Mother Nature can throw some curve balls and we're always ready for it —you know, anticipating the worst scenarios. And that's why we're in a good place right now. But we're not out of it. It's still a dangerous situation. And that's we want to remind people.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Absolutely, Governor. Something we spoke to your Commissioner of Homeland Security and Emergency Services earlier, and she said that because crews were already in place utility crews from the last storm earlier this week, it really helped to – help this effort and them being already positioned to jump into action.
Governor Hochul: Right. It's also a lesson we learned from other storms. As soon as we get the warning, we've been talking about this storm since Wednesday as we're coming through the previous storm. This seems like literally every two days there's a new storm event occurring. And so, keeping people here, we have 11,000 utility workers statewide, but to direct them to Western and to the North country – the North country, the Watertown area, Jefferson County. We're in constant communication with them as well. They've been hit hard. They have more snow coming this evening, but they're resilient and it's not as populated, but we still we want to make sure their power is up as soon as possible as well.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Governor. A lot of the focus right now is on Erie County Buffalo really being impacted, but we're also seeing impacts in the North Country. Watertown getting hit really hard right now. How are the State's resources being spread to other communities across the State?
Governor Hochul: No, that's what I was just saying is that I keep talking about Watertown and making sure that their emergency personnel have everything they need. We keep asking them. We have – we have more utility crews out there. We have – we pre-deployed more assets out there. We have anyone ready if necessary for search and rescue teams. We really have been laser focused on that area of the State as well. It's critically important to us. And again, they're accustomed to this in one sense, but still a blinding snowstorm on country roads can be treacherous.
We want to make sure that people are safe and make sure that if the power does go down, that it's restored as soon as possible because the temperatures are so, so bitter cold. I remember as a young mom growing up, with my family in Hamburg. But it's like when the power goes out for days on end and you're home with cold children and there's not enough food in the house. So, we have hopefully avoided that situation with our earlier warnings, with telling people to shop early, get your provisions in place, pick up your medicines from the pharmacy, and really plan to hunker down for a few days, which is exactly what's unfolding now. But the end is in sight. The North Country will get more snow this evening, upwards of another foot. And Western New York is with the moving bans, which are now concentrating in the Southtowns. But it's something that we're monitoring so closely because people's lives are on the line.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Absolutely, and it's something we saw during the blizzard, the Christmas blizzard last year. You know, the devastation that took place. It looks like we learned a lot of lessons from that, Governor. And do you have any updates? Are there any injuries being reported so far? Anything of that nature this time around?
Governor Hochul: Not at this time. And, again, we're reminding people there is a driving ban in place. We also know that a number of trucks have tried to enter down near the Dunkirk exit to get back on the thruway. We'll be enforcing this, and again, this is for the safety of motorists, and we encourage people to stay off the roads, but we did learn a lot of lessons in the past and a lot of it has to do with coordination and I'm really proud of the way our teams are working so seamlessly with local government as well.
Again, there's a lot of attention on this particular weekend, knowing that upwards of 60,000 plus people would be heading into the eye of the storm this afternoon if we had not been successful in persuading the NFL to have the Buffalo Bills game moved a little more than 24 hours later to Monday, which will be very cold, but we won't have that confluence of heavy snow, very bitter colds and the high winds, which is the dangerous combination that we knew would be hitting right during game time this afternoon.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Absolutely. Governor, a lot to assess here in the coming hour. When do you plan to meet with your team and decide when to lift more of those travel bans? And maybe, perhaps, reaching out to the NFL and seeing if that time of 4:30 tomorrow for that game will hold?
Governor Hochul: Oh, you can feel comfortable at that game time tomorrow. I can say that with a fairly high degree of confidence that that will not change. As far as the lifting of the bans, I know people are anxious. I literally just hung up from my every two-hour briefing. I will be getting briefed again in the next two hours and we'll have more up to the minute information from our Extreme Risk Weather Center, which is brand new.
It just opened in December. And that gives us real time information that is so critically important to us to make these decisions. And another new innovation that's been providing us real time information, I was over at our Emergency Operations Center yesterday, and we could look on a computer screen and see the dashboard cameras from all of our snowplows.
So, they are now embedded with cameras so we can see what's happening on the roads that they're on, which actually gives you really accurate information about conditions as well. So, we'll gather all this information as well as the forecast, the visibility being very important to us and let Western New Yorkers know as soon as possible when that driving ban will be lifted.
We'll be in coordination with the County of Erie and the City of Buffalo as well.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Eyes and ears everywhere across the state. Governor, we’ll end on this. Your message to New Yorkers, Western New York in particular, of course, now they've been hunkering down for many hours. They might be getting a little anxious and wanting to venture out. What is your message to them as we're still getting pounded out west?
Governor Hochul: Well, first of all, I want to say thank you. That's my message to Western New Yorkers. The reason we don't have injuries or loss of life or people stranded is because they listened to us, and they heeded our warnings, and they were very responsible, and again, I know it's frustrating.
I've been trapped during driving bans and stuck in my house with kids. As I said, I've lived this experience, but the end is in sight. We literally believe the ban will be lifted this afternoon. We just have to pinpoint the time, we'll give enough notice, and that people should resume fairly normal activity. But again, we're still in the middle of a snow event, and this is a serious weather event, and just because the ban is lifted, if you can still spend time at home. And again, there's the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, and today's a Sunday, so that does give us a little more breathing room, where the commute shouldn't be as difficult tomorrow anyhow.
So, if Mother Nature had a hit of any time, this was the right weekend to hit. And again, be able to salvage the Buffalo Bills game and keep them playing here in Western New York was very important to us. And I'm so glad we were able to be successful in that as well.
Robert Guaderrama, Spectrum: Absolutely. Governor, we want to thank you for your time. We want to thank you and all your crews out there across the state, keeping everybody safe. And of course, we hope they stay safe out there. Governor Kathy Hochul, thank you so much for joining us today.
Governor Hochul: All right. Thanks for your great coverage. Bye-bye.