Residents of Buffalo take some of the worst winter storms in the U.S. in stride, but the blizzard of December 2022 shut the city down and caused dozens of deaths.
The timing was all wrong for Mumina Musse, a pregnant mother who was close to giving birth and got hopelessly snowed in. At one point she made a call to request an ambulance but learned that ambulances could not get through to her neighborhood. The emergency operator gave her this advice: “Call us when you see the head coming out, and we will walk you through.”
Luckily, Mumina’s sister, Halima, worked at the Jericho Road Community Health Center. Halima got in touch with Dr. Myron Glick, the center’s founder and CEO. Glick put out a call to the health center’s doctors to ask if anyone lived close to the Musse home, and three doctors responded, walking through the mounting snowdrifts to get there. Musse was in labor for 36 hours and gave birth on Christmas day.
A new baby was only one of several dramas Jericho Road faced during the storm. The center sponsors a shelter for asylum seekers, some of whom are on their way to Canada. It often houses as many as 150 people. The storm knocked out power at the Vive Shelter, leaving it without electricity and heat as temperatures plummeted. Glick called a friend who owned a business with access to an industrial-strength generator. Streets were impassable even for four-wheel drive vehicles, but Glick’s friend was able to get a payloader – a heavy equipment machine often used in construction – to carry the generator and fuel to the shelter. The lights came back on, along with the heat.
Glick and his wife started a private practice in Buffalo in 1997 and eventually launched Jericho Road, which now has about 50 providers. The staff also includes about 35 interpreters who help some of the 25,000 patients, many of whom are refugees. Jericho Road also sponsors a related Priscilla Project that supports pregnant mothers with doulas and interpreters. “It helps them be comfortable in a pretty foreign setting,” Glick said.