It will be a Christmas to remember for Amanda and Ethyn Lucca of Medina.
Amanda was advised that severe wind was already affecting her home in Medina a few hours after arriving at work in LeRoy on Friday morning.
“We had been notified that some branches came down at our house. So, I left my healthcare job at around 1130a.m.,” says Amanda.
Her husband Ethyn meanwhile was preparing for the storm, shopping around LeRoy purchasing gas for their generator and food supplies at the store to prepare for the Christmas weekend shut in at home in Medina. The couple would never make it home until Sunday, Christmas day.
The Luccas were on their way home from LeRoy about noon on Friday December 23rd, attempting to get ahead of the worst of the Blizzard of 2022 before it halted all travel in Genesee County, when they were involved in a minor accident on Hutton Road in Oakfield that damaged their vehicle.
“We are so lucky that the damage done (to the vehicle) was plastic, and we could remove it. We would still be there if we couldn’t have. We requested a tow truck, but they could not get to us.”
She says the accident happened because there was another accident in front of them on Hutton Road.
“My husband clipped the rear end of a stopped white van in a white out. The police quickly blocked off the road to prevent anyone else from piling on to the off-road accident.”
After 45 minutes attempting to travel two miles down Hutton Road towards home, which was 10 miles from the accident scene, the Luccas realized they could not see and were running low on gas, so they decided to turn back and hunker down at the 7-Eleven on S. Main Street in Oakfield.
“We followed two cars back towards town. The man in front of us was hanging out of his window to try and direct the rest of us how to stay on the road. The 7-Eleven employees and the people at the warming shelter at the Goose, along with police and the EMT’s that saw us after our accident all checked on us, those men were the bravest people, heroes.”
The warming station at the Goose was flooded with people, and the 7-Eleven was not open, and workers were trapped there as well. Amanda says even some of the rescue teams were also trapped.
“They knew we were stuck, and they did everything to help us, they kept us updated on how everything was going around us. Everyone was amazing. They saved our lives. If we would have stayed (on Hutton Road) and waited it out like so many others did, we wouldn’t have made it.”
Amanda and Ethyn want people to know how bad the situation really was in Oakfield/Alabama during the Blizzard of 2022 on Friday and Saturday, and they want people to say a prayer for the heroes who spent Christmas 2022 away from their families and in very dangerous weather conditions to assist and rescue those who were strangers.
“We were some of the lucky people out there. It was the storm of a lifetime. I’ll never forget the Christmas I spent with my husband at 7-Eleven.”
The Luccas finally made it home to Medina on Christmas morning about 11:00a.m., only to find out that some pipes had burst in their home. Luckily, they arrived home in time to turn off the main water valve to prevent flooding inside their home.
I really don’t care about Orleans County police blotter from 2018.