Buffalo October 2006 Storm Gallery - Page 9

Day three with no power, no heat, no fridge, no e-mail and no cable - and the community was still smiling.

"Now this is dedication," grinned Doug Zavodny, a Town of Tonawanda Water and Sewer Department worker, upon stepping foot into Consumer's Beverages to pick up a case of Labatt's Blue at 11 a.m. Sunday, two hours before the Buffalo Bills kicked off in Detroit. The store was dark, but a generator was powering the cash register - all that Zavodny and his fellow workers who had been on 12-hour shifts clearing tree limbs could ask in the aftermath of the freaky October snowstorm.

The themes for Sunday, it appeared, were makin' do and getting creative.

Facing the possibility of as much as seven more days without modern luxuries, storm survivors trekked hours, even across state lines, to buy generators and kerosene heaters. They strung extension cords between houses to share electricity. They fashioned coolers out of old snow and burned fallen branches for fuel.

Others found themselves enjoying a little bit of old-fashioned family time for the first time in who knows how long.

Plaka, a Greek family restaurant in Kenmore, has transformed into a home away from home for many of Kenmore and North Buffalo's powerless. "This place saved my life," said Rick Miller, who is staying with friends two blocks from the popular restaurant. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to start paying rent." Owner Joanne Gogos said the restaurant never ran out of power. Since Friday, Joanne Gogos, her husband, Sam, and son, Telly, have been serving up a steady stream of grateful customers. "We can't make coffee fast enough," she said. Among those sitting down for some tasty grub Sunday was Mike Andrzejewski, the chef at Tsunami on Kenmore Avenue, and his wife, Sherri. Andrzejewski wasn't as fortunate as the Gogos family. Just as a table of eight was digging into a platter of sushi and some appetizers Thursday night at Tsunami, the lights flickered a few moments before the power conked out completely. The party "relaxed and made the best of it," the chef said, ordering a couple of bottles of wine.

But while some of his fish in the cooler got too warm, others got too cold. Sherri Andrzejewski had desperatedly tried to rig a battery pack to the heater of the exotic fish tank in the restaurant's dining room - but her efforts were in vain. "My eel, my puffer, they're all frozen," she said gloomily.

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Right: Another view of that plane with the back weighed down by the heavy, wet snow.

On the East Side of Buffalo, Corine Simmons was hoping a bit of ingenuity and a good set of clippers would help her stay warm until the power came back. At the corner of Best Street and Wohlers Avenue, Simmons scavenged for firewood Sunday, filling the back seat of her car with branches she had clipped from downed boughs. "I bought a wood-burning stove a few months ago because my heating bills were so high," she said. "Now it's really come in handy."

There's plenty of wood on her own street, Pershing Avenue, where a 100-year-old hard maple with a 40-inch diameter trunk was uprooted. A National Grid crew from Watertown, part of the second wave of workers to arrive from the North Country, reported that they hoped to have the power back on in Simmons' neighborhood "very shortly." That may not happen for Simmons, though. The falling tree ripped the electrical supply wires off her house, and their exposed ends lay in a puddle.

Storm Stories. Weather Radio. Generators. Power Inverters. Kerosene Heaters. Propane Heaters. Mr. Heater. Wood Burning. LED Flashlights. Snowblowers. Unclgadget.com - Uncle Gadget.