Several attendees at a Kansas City Chiefs’ playoff game in January have experienced limb amputations due to frostbite sustained during the wild-card matchup, which occurred on a day approaching historic cold temperatures. The Research Medical Center in Missouri, as confirmed by its staff to The Associated Press on Friday, has performed amputations on 12 individuals among the numerous affected during the approximately two-week period of severe cold weather. The predominant amputations involve fingers and toes, with the hospital expecting additional surgeries in the coming month as these injuries progress. Some of those requiring amputations were present when the Chiefs triumphed over the Miami Dolphins on Jan. 13, enduring minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, accompanied by wind gusts leading to a chilling temperature of minus 27 degrees.
Although not the coldest game in NFL history (that record stands at minus 13 degrees during the 1967 NFL “Ice Bowl” championship between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys), the Jan. 13 matchup at the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium marked the coldest in the venue’s history. Before this date, two games at Arrowhead shared the record for the coldest-ever played at the stadium, both registering minus 1 degree Fahrenheit – the first against the Denver Broncos in 1983 and the second in 2016 against the Tennessee Titans.
Despite the National Weather Service issuing a warning about the “dangerously cold” windchill on Jan. 13, the Chiefs and Dolphins proceeded with the scheduled game. In Upstate New York, a blizzard in Buffalo on the same day led to adverse road conditions, causing the Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers to postpone their game until the following day.
