Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA

by Timothy W. Kneeland

On Friday, January 28, 1977, it began to snow in Buffalo. The second largest city in New York State, located directly in line with the Great Lakes’ snowbelt, was no stranger to this kind of winter weather. With their city averaging ninety-four inches of snow per year, the citizens of Buffalo knew how to survive a snowstorm. But the blizzard that engulfed the city for the next four days was about to make history. Between the subzero wind chill and whiteout conditions, hundreds of people were trapped when the snow began to fall. Twenty- to thirty-foot-high snow drifts isolated residents in their offices and homes, and even in their cars on the highway. With a dependency on rubber-tire vehicles, which lost all traction in the heavily blanketed urban streets, they were cut off from food, fuel, and even electricity. This one unexpected snow disaster stranded tens of thousands of people, froze public utilities and transportation, and cost Buffalo hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses and property damages. The destruction wrought by this snowstorm, like the destruction brought on by other natural disasters, was from a combination of weather-related hazards and the public policies meant to mitigate them. Buffalo’s 1977 blizzard, the first snowstorm to be declared a disaster in US history, came after a century of automobility, suburbanization, and snow removal guidelines like the bare-pavement policy. Kneeland offers a compelling examination of whether the 1977 storm was an anomaly or the inevitable outcome of years of city planning. From the local to the state and federal levels, Kneeland discusses governmental response and disaster relief, showing how this regional event had national implications for environmental policy and how its effects have resounded through the complexities of disaster politics long after the snow fell.

248 pages, Hardcover

Published May 25, 2021

About the author

Timothy W. Kneeland is a Professor and Director of the Center for Public History at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. He is the author of Pushbutton Psychiatry: A Cultural History of Electroshock in America (2002; 2008), Democrats and Republicans on Social Issues (2016), The Buffalo Blizzard of 1977 (2017), Playing Politics with Natural Disaster: Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 Election, and the Origins of FEMA (2020), Declaring Disaster: The Buffalo Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA (2021), and The Routledge History of American Science (2022). In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Kneeland provides political analysis for local media in Upstate New York.

Reviews

[George Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important, highly relevant, and readable story of weather, politics, and lobbying. Consider the following: Have you ever been caught in heavy snow on a highway or city street? Are you curious about, or maybe furious about, how major cities learned, or not, to deal with snow? Do you ever wonder if they used to do it better? Do you ever wonder how FEMA came to be, or how highway departments in the Northeast and upper-Midwest came to be so dependent upon salt? If so, or if you’re just interested in the intersection of weather, politics, and lobbying (in this case, the powerful salt lobby), you will find this book engaging and illuminating. Timothy Kneeland, who has experience in both academic and public history, has produced a thoroughly researched and well-documented story that is clearly and concisely rendered, easy-to-read, and enormously informative.

[Budd Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know, $25 for a book with 140 pages of type is a little steep. However, this has all sorts of interesting information about Buffalo and the snow removal business. It's hard to argue with the author's thought that some sort of snow-related disaster was inevitable somewhere; Buffalo was lucky enough to get caught in "the perfect storm."