the travel nightmare that began before christmas is is still not over. pamela brown here in for anderson tonight. and when we left you last night, southwest airlines ceo was apologizing to all the passengers stranded by all the flights the company canceled due to the weather and its system meltdown. well, 24 hours later there are about another 2,500 reasons to apologize, as in about 2,500 more cancellations today and nearly as many tomorrow. and it s gotten to the point that southwest has been busing some people from airports as far away as new york s laguardia and denver to houston. details now from cnn s gabe cohen. reporter: tens of thousands of travelers still weathering southwest s meltdown without a clear end in sight. i m hungry and exhausted. i just want to go home. reporter: the airline canceling more than 2,500 flights wednesday. 62% of its schedule according to flight aware. with a similar wave of cancellations already shaping up for thursday. this has been
of the state. buffalo and other cities are struggling to dig out of 43 inches of snow and freezing temperatures and power outages. i ll talk with the buffalo police commissioner this hour. many americans are still feeling the effects of the arctic blast, including millions of air travelers. southwest airlines experiencing massive disruptions, with more than 65% of its flights canceled just today, adding to the holiday travel chaos. also tonight, vladimir putin claims he s ready to negotiate a solution to the ukraine war, but a key ukrainian official says the russian president needs to get back to reality, as moscow continues to slaughter innocent civilians. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin this hour with the deadly weather emergency in western new york. governor kathy hochul is calling it, and i m quoting her, the blizzard of the century and she is warning it is far from over.
diligently. our police officers with our plow operators, our front end loaders, to go out and do rescues of people that were stranded. but once friday night late into the night came we were completely debilitated. we couldn t move. heavy plows were getting stuck. you just couldn t move anywhere. in what was complete absolute gridlock for days. you couldn t drive through this. it was a different kind of snow. once the snow started to subside a little bit, we were able to get our search and rescue teams and unfortunately recovery teams. we used our scuba dive team because of the equipment that they have and the warm weather gear. our s.w.a.t. team. we worked very collaboratively with the new york state police, with their s.w.a.t. team. we got other rochester police brought their dive team in. a lot of state agencies, state police agencies. and then the guard. and we organized a very calculated, organized, collaborative effort to go out and respond to 911 calls for
our dive team, our scuba dive team, they ve got all the warm weather gear. they re used to being on top of the ice. our s.w.a.t. team, we re working with the new york state police, but the s.w.a.t. teams, new york state fire, parts, corrections, everybody is bringing equipment. we ve got numerous search and rescue teams divided in various parts of the city and they re working through calls. commissioner, what should fellow buffalonians be doing to stay safe? stay home. don t go out. the unfortunate thing, we re seeing a lot of cars are driving on the street and they are becoming a part of the problem. some of them are getting stuck and blocking our recovery efforts. unfortunately, that s what we re doing is recovery efforts. we have the fire department out doing ems calls. we need people to stay home. nothing is open. you re safest in the house. i couldn t be more proud of the work that our police department