CNN
 — 

As police in Buffalo, New York, sifted through 911 and welfare check calls dating back to the earlier days of the deadly winter storm, harrowing accounts of those lost in the storm have emerged.

Among the victims was Monique Alexander, a 52-year-old mother who died in the Buffalo storm, her daughter Casey Maccarone said. Alexander had rushed out of the house as conditions were worsening, saying she would be right back, Maccarone said.

Two hours later, when she had not returned, her daughter said she posted on a Buffalo blizzard Facebook group asking if anyone had seen her mom. Just minutes later, a stranger messaged her and asked to call her, Maccarone said.

“He just instantly broke down crying,” Maccarone said. “He was stranded as well and he was walking down the street and he saw her in the snow. So he picked her up and he placed her under the awning … so that she wouldn’t get snowed on anymore.”

“Her grand kids were waiting for her to come home. We were waiting for her to come home,” Maccarone said.

The death toll in Erie County, New York, climbed to 37 by Tuesday evening as first responders went door-to-door and car-to-car checking on people they couldn’t reach days ago, when a blizzard swept through the area, trapping residents and snarling emergency response during the holiday weekend.

It took until Wednesday evening for Buffalo Police to announce they were done following up on the unanswered 911 and welfare check calls – which at some point reached 1,100 calls, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph A. Gramaglia said.

Some officers checking on residents arrived to find that, in some cases, they were too late.

“It’s a grueling, gruesome task that they had to do,” Gramaglia said. “They recovered a substantial amount of bodies and it’s terrible.”

Some people have been found dead in cars, on streets or in snowbanks, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said.

Among the storm’s victims is Anndel Taylor, 22, whose family said she was found dead in Buffalo over the holiday weekend after getting trapped in her car by the blizzard.

After losing contact with her, her family also posted her location to a private Facebook page related to the storm to ask for help, and a man called to say he had found her without a pulse, her sister said.

Also among the fatalities was 46-year-old Melissa Morrison, a Buffalo mother of two whose body was found in the snow near a Tim Horton’s, her mother Linda Addeo told CNN.

Addeo had worried about her daughter after her son came across social media posts on Friday about a body that was found near the coffee shop that Morrison lived by, she said.

On Tuesday, the coroner’s office informed the family that the same body was positively identified as that of Morrison, Addeo said.

Another storm-related death involved a 26-year-old man, Abdul Sharifu, who left to get provisions for a family who asked for his help on Saturday morning, his cousin Ally Sharifu told CNN.

His wife – who is pregnant and days away from giving birth – woke up that evening to find him gone. After sharing a photo of the missing man on Facebook in a desperate attempt to find him, the family got a call about a man who was found lying on the street and rushed to a children’s hospital, Ally Sharifu said.

Ally Sharifu said he ended up identifying his cousin’s body at a hospital the next morning. Abdul Sharifu and his cousin are refugees from Congo who were resettled in the US in 2017 after they lived for about five years in a refugee camp in Burundi, Ally Sharifu said.

“The stories are heartbreaking, just heartbreaking,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.

The police commissioner said he expects that rising temperatures in the coming days will melt the snow and uncover more storm victims. Officers will be out on Thursday searching in areas where bodies were reported but never found, Gramaglia said.

The winter storm’s grim effects have been widespread, with reports of fatalities stretching beyond New York and across 11 other US states. There have in total been least 62 storm-related deaths reported nationwide, and they mainly involved weather-related traffic accidents or fatalities related to the cold.

Ohio confirmed 9 weather-related deaths, Colorado recorded 2 deaths, Kansas and Kentucky confirmed 3 deaths each, South Carolina confirmed 2 deaths, and Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin each recorded one storm-related death.

As emergency services were restored in Buffalo, the New York National Guard said they made at least 86 rescues, including getting a woman to the hospital just before she gave birth.

Police were also back out, making ten arrests in Buffalo as of Wednesday in connection with suspected winter storm looting, the police commissioner said in a Wednesday news conference.

But, Mayor Brown stressed, “This is a minority of individuals.”

“In typical ‘city of good neighbors’ fashion, people have come together – they’ve assisted each other. Neighbors have helped neighbors. Friends have helped friends, and members of this community have helped people that they have never met before,” the mayor said Wednesday.

One Buffalo woman, Sha’Kyra Aughtry, said she looked out her window on Christmas Eve to find a frostbitten man calling for help in the frigid cold.

Her boyfriend carried the man, 64-year-old Joe White, into the house, and she used a blow dryer to melt the ice off his red and blistered hands, Aughtry said.

After she called 911 and no one came to help, Aughtry said, she took to Facebook to plead for assistance and ended up getting White to the hospital with help from good Samaritans who came and snowplowed them out, she said.

Social media also proved useful when a woman went into labor two days before Christmas.

When Erica Thomas began having contractions, the snow from the winter storm had piled up about halfway up the front door of her Buffalo home and she and her husband, Davon Thomas, couldn’t get out.

The soon-to-be father called 911 for help and was told they’d attempt to get an emergency vehicle there as soon as possible. He was later told responders had attempted to get to their house but couldn’t.

Davon Thomas called a friend who made a post for the couple on a Buffalo Facebook group, asking for help and the couple ended up getting in touch with Raymonda Reynolds, an experienced doula of five years.

Reynolds and her friend, doula and nurse Iva Blackburn, got on a video call with the couple and guided them through delivering the baby and cutting the umbilical cord.

“We started screaming like it was a Buffalo Bills touchdown,” Reynolds said, describing the moment the baby girl was born. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve been a part of.”

In another act of kindness, a Buffalo barbershop owner, Craig Elston, ended up opening his store for people to seek refuge from the storm. “A lot of people slept in the barber chairs a lot of people put the chairs together,” Elston said.

“I was just thinking about just keeping people warm. It was really that simple,” he said.

After six days of restrictions on traveling while road conditions were unsafe, Buffalo is lifting its winter storm driving ban at midnight Thursday and replacing it with a travel advisory, Poloncarz announced.

The driving ban had been in place in Buffalo since Friday morning.

“We still have a ways to go but we have come a long way in just a couple of days. This will allow our residents to get back to work – allow them to get to supermarkets, pharmacies, and to get to medical appointments,” Mayor Brown said.

Poloncarz was asked Wednesday about the timing of the driving ban, and whether there had been discussion among officials about issuing it earlier.

Officials started discussing a potential ban Thursday, Poloncarz said, but they initially believed the snow band wouldn’t reach the Erie County until 10 a.m. the next morning.

On Friday morning, temperatures “dropped dramatically,” but whiteout conditions didn’t hit until about 10 a.m., he noted, after the ban was issued.

“If anyone is to be blamed, you can blame me. I’m the one who has to make the final call on behalf of the county,” Poloncarz said.

Poloncarz also criticized how Buffalo’s mayor has handled storm cleanup efforts, saying Brown has not been on daily coordination calls with other municipalities and that the city has been slow to reopen.

When asked about those remarks, the mayor told CNN, “I’m not concerned about those comments, my concern is for the residents of the city of Buffalo.”

Hundreds of pieces of equipment were plowing and hauling snow on Wednesday, and most streets were passable in Buffalo by the evening, Brown announced in a Wednesday evening update.

As temperatures warm up, there have been concerns about a possible “rapid melt” leading to flooding, Erie County officials said.

The Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Daniel J. Neaverth, Jr. said they feel “very comfortable” in their positioning to be able to handle potential flooding.

“We have an ample supply ready to go ready to be deployed with personnel in the event that we have some type of flooding,” Neaverth said.