trouble. plus, china nears a covid breaking point. an outbreak over stretches hospitals and pushes its precedent to take a new step in that country s fight against the virus, and how soon is soon? the committee investigating donald trump s taxes promises to release them any day. this is what we are watching at this hour. good morning, everyone. thank you for joining me. kate bolduan is off today. we begin this hour in western new york where a, quote, generational blizzard is pummeling the city of buffalo and all of erie county. the death toll has climbed to 25 and the county executive says that number is likely to grow. i just have to offer my deepest condolences to those that lost a loved one as a result of this horrible situation. i never thought i would face this. i thought the storm we faced in 2014 would have been the worst in which we had 14 deaths and this far surpassed it and there are probably more deaths that will be announced later today. the city of buffal
even when we get to the stub stations substations, we find there is structural damage and it is frozen. those are the biggest challenges. what is happening on treacherous roads, trying to clear them, getting people that are stranded in vehicles, we recovered many of them. also what is happening inside the homes, we have vulnerable senior citizens we re trying to get to. we restored power to 300,000 people. i do want to point to the successes. ho however, there are still 23,000 people in buffalo. we ve been trying to plow the way to the stations, help them manage the restoration of power. so we don t have an estimate. we did have power back on in a large part of the city. it went out again because the infrastructure was not able to withstand the storms around it. so that has been the challenge. so i am hoping in the next day, but we can make no guarantees because just when you think the day is getting brighter, mother nature comes back and hits us once again. we have enough
i m paula reed in washington. for a ferocious freeze complicating rescue efforts after a deadly winter storm pummeled the u.s. freed warnings in effect across the u.s. snow and sheets of ice. the storm blamed for at least 26 deaths. roads impassable in upstate new york after a monstrous blizzard. for nearly 12 hours it was almost impossible to go anywhere in a vast majority of the community. this is an area with approximately 500,000 residents between the city of buffalo and the suburbs. it was such that we had to pull emergency rescue vehicling off the roads. the bitter cold icing over the christmas celebrations. this morning parts of the south seeing the coldest christmas in decades and making a mess of holiday travel. 1,800 flights canceled again today. we have a team covering this all tracking the latest winter weather developments but beginning in buffalo, new york. paw lo sandoval is there. last time we spoke we did see some trucks on the road. what s the latest the
airports. why it could be days before they get to fly, and look at this white-knuckle landing in dangerous winds, so when will the cold snap break? rob marciano times it out. also tonight, a deadly shooting in the country s largest shopping mall. frightened customers running for cover, the police chief getting emotional as he described the scene, and what we re learning tonight about the search for suspects. a new attack in southern ukraine. deadly shelling in a key city on christmas eve. we re in kyiv tonight where ukrainians are marking the holiday with empty chairs to remember the soldiers missing or held captive by russia. safe and sound. the 5-month-old twins who were kidnapped now back with their family in ohio right in time for christmas. a suspect now under arrest. a community thankful. the jackpot is growing. mega millions topping half a billion dollars ahead of and tracking santa. the u.s. military says not even a bomb cyclone can keep him away on christma
weather wreaking havoc this holiday weekend, many in the united states are facing their coldest christmas in decades. right now more than 175 million people are under windchill alerts. the arctic blast extend interesting montana all the way down to, get this, yeah, florida. some temperatures in the midwest dipping into the negative 30s, even atlanta is seeing negative windchills. the bitter cold proving extremely dangerous. at least 15 people have lost their lives across the country so far. in tennessee, people are seeing intermittent power disruptions as the bone-chilling weather pushes the state s power grid to the absolute max. more than 840,000 customers are now without power nationwide. whiteout continues make it too perilous to travel. new york officials are issuing a driving ban for several counties amid blizzard conditions there, and if you are trying to fly this weekend, i got to give you some good luck and a prayer because pacific raceways than 1,700 flights have be