Several fans at a Kansas City Chiefs’ playoff game in January have since lost extremities as a result of frostbite suffered during the wild-card match-up, which took place on a day so cold it nearly made history.
Employees at Missouri’s Research Medical Center confirmed to The Associated Press Friday that they’ve already had to perform amputations on 12 of the dozens affected during the roughly two-week period of frigid weather. The majority of those amputations have involved fingers and toes.
The hospital says it anticipates additional surgeries within the next month as those “injuries evolve.”
AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann
Attendees of one of the Kansas City Chiefs’ playoff games in January lost extremities as a result of frostbite suffered at the game, which took place on a day so freezing it nearly made history.
Some of those needing amputations were in attendance when the Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins on Jan. 13, supporting the teams in minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, with wind gusts that made for a chill of minus 27 degrees.
While it wasn’t the coldest-ever game in the history of the league — that honor remains minus 13 degrees during the 1967 NFL “Ice Bowl” championship between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys — it was the coldest at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.
Prior to Jan. 13, two games at Arrowhead tied for the coldest-ever played at the stadium at minus 1 degree F — the first against the Denver Broncos in 1983 and the second in 2016 against the Tennessee Titans.
The National Weather Service had issued an alert regarding the “dangerously cold” windchill on Jan. 13, but that didn’t deter the Chiefs and Dolphins from playing as scheduled. In Upstate New York, road conditions caused by a blizzard in Buffalo that same day forced the Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers to delay their game until the following day.
