Blowing and drifting snow creating whiteouts caused a series of accidents involving at

least 20 vehicles Thursday afternoon along the outbound Skyway near the Small Boat Harbor.

Nine people were taken to area hospitals, but none of their injuries was considered life-

threatening, authorities said.

&#8220Supervisors on the scene said it wasn&#8217t so much a lot of snow falling, it was

the blowing and drifting causing whiteout conditions,&#8221 said Buffalo police spokesman

Michael J. DeGeorge.

Tens of thousands of area motorists travel that section of roadway each day, and

Thursday&#8217s series of chain-reaction accidents caused at least some to wonder if the

recent reconstruction of Route 5 ends up creating more problems for drivers during wintry

weather.

Buffalo police say that since reconstruction of Route 5 started, and portions of it have

been lowered, there have been more safety concerns in connection with blowing and drifting

snow, just past the south end of the Skyway.

&#8220Due to the fact that it is a lower elevation, it seems to me we do have more drifting

issues than we had before,&#8221 said Police Inspector Joseph F. Strano, who twice Thursday

ordered the Skyway closed, partly because of the dangerous road conditions where the elevated

roadway blends into the lowered section of Route 5 in South Buffalo.

The reconstruction of Route 5 is part of an overall plan to provide greater access to the

city&#8217s waterfront.

South Council Member Michael P. Kearns hasn&#8217t heard those complaints from his

constituents and said he still advocates getting rid of the Skyway and lowering Route 5 to

grade level.

But the issue is worth discussing.

&#8220It&#8217s something I think we&#8217re going to have to look at,&#8221 Kearns said.

&#8220Has the reconfigured design caused more accidents?&#8221

The outbound portion was initially closed at about 12:30 p.m., after at least 20 vehicles

were involved in accidents during a near whiteout of snow blowing horizontally off nearby Lake

Erie.

&#8220There&#8217s a stretch of at least 50 cars all backed up, and I&#8217d say at least

20 to 30 were tapped or rear-ended,&#8221 said Bryan Carr, The Buffalo News production

director, who was driving toward the city on the Skyway at about 12:30 p.m.

&#8220It was a complete whiteout at moments,&#8221 he added. &#8220The snow was just

blowing across the road.&#8221

So many vehicles were involved in the pileup that the crash scene extended for more than a

quarter of a mile, observers reported from the scene.

Police cars, tow trucks and ambulances were scrambling to reach the disabled vehicles

afterwards, but the pileup and blowing snow hampered efforts to reach the scene on Route 5.

Some emergency vehicles had to go the wrong way on Tifft Street to gain access.

The collisions were severe enough that airbags deployed in many of the vehicles.

One person was pulled out of a vehicle, another was taken off a Metro Bus on a stretcher,

and emergency crews were carrying people over snow banks to ambulances parked on the road

parallel to Route 5.

Nine ambulances eventually responded to the scene, and nine people ultimately were taken to

area hospitals with various injuries, said Jay Smith, a spokesman for Rural/Metro Medical

Services.

The difficulty in getting tow trucks to the scene forced tow-truck operators that could

reach it to make multiple trips in towing the disabled vehicles off Route 5 to nearby staging

areas.

The multiple-vehicle pileup occurred on a weird weather day, when the other end of the

Skyway complex, just a few miles away in downtown Buffalo, was bathed in sunshine. Although

the outbound lanes of the Skyway complex were closed for a couple of hours, they reopened at

about 2:30 p.m.

And it all happened on the 33rd anniversary of the Blizzard of '77, as a very pale

imitation of that catastrophic storm dumped up to 8 inches of snow on the region, leading to a

lake-effect snow warning for all of Western New York.