holiday. freeze warnings still in effect in several states at this hour. blizzard conditions, at least 26 people have died in the actic blast, across eight state. in a hard-hit erie county, new york, roads remain impassable. still, a very dangerous situation. driving bans are still in place. this was the first time in buffalo fire history that they were unable to respond to calls. we want to remind everybody, there was a period hours straight in which we could not send out emergency service crews, because it was too dangerous. we will talk to that official in just a few minutes. plus, bitter-cold icing over the christmas celebrations in the midwest, east coast and southeast, even florida is feeling the chill, much of the state experiencing its coldest christmas since 1983. let s start in buffalo, new york. polo sandoval is braving is the cold temperatures there. merry christmas. reporter: merry christmas. it is in a recovery process right now, the sun finally came o
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
Merry christmas. you re live in the cnn newsroom. i m paula reid in washington. we begin this hour with that dangerous, extreme winter storm cau causing chaos on this christmas day. freeze warnings in infect in several states. blizzard conditions are pummelling states across the great lakes. the arctic blast now being blamed for at least 26 deaths since it began last week. conditions still poor in parts of upstate new york. roads impassable in erie county after days of snowfall. governor kathy hokel detailing the urgent situation unfolding this morning on cnn. we have people that have not had power since friday and we deploy usually 5,000 we have 7,000 utility crews ready to restore the power. but it has been impossible to get to many of the substations.