fire department to seize gasoline to prevent driving, if necessary. In Lancaster, only two north–south routes were open. An early Sunday morning helicopter tour by Erie County Sheriff Ken Braun had revealed about 125 cars and trucks almost totally buried in the Lancaster area, as well as a young man leaning against a street light strung across an intersection. Some towns were using metal detectors to locate buried cars before using heavy equipment to clear the snow. Light snow fell throughout Monday, with variable winds gusting at times to more than with a peak gust of at the Buffalo airport. Only 20 of the usual 400 Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority buses were running, and those were reserved for necessary travel. From when the blizzard struck Friday until Monday, there were no intercity bus, Amtrak train and commercial air services to Buffalo. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had been brought in by the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration to assist in the cleanup effort; they received a mission statement on Sunday for emergency snow removal. The USACE named their effort "Operation Snow Go 1977", and got their first contractor to start clearing snow on Monday. Three hundred U.S. Army soldiers from an engineer battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, joined the effort. During Monday night, police continued searching vehicles stranded since Friday, and the wind increased again to . Next seven days On Tuesday, February 1, Buffalo Mayor Makowski declared a state of emergency that prohibited nonessential travel. Violation of the travel ban could potentially result in a US$500 fine and 90 days in jail, which was sufficient to limit the number of people ticketed to 97. Following a Monday request by New York Governor Carey, on Tuesday, Tom Casey added Orleans, Genesee, and Wyoming counties in western New York and Jefferson and Lewis counties in northern New York to the emergency declaration. On Tuesday afternoon, the winds diminished to about , and the sun came out. On Wednesday, February 2, there was also occasional sun. Mail service resumed in the City of Buffalo with the help of six four-wheel drive trucks brought in from Rochester, the first mail delivery since the previous Friday. Fuhrmann Boulevard was cleared, allowing workers trapped at the Freezer Queen plant since Friday to leave, and freeing Coast Guard personnel trapped behind drifts at the end of the road, who had been stranded by the