Utility crews worked in subfreezing temperatures on Saturday to try to put the power back on for almost half a million customers left without electricity by an ice storm that crippled parts of several US states last week.
The storm that began in the Midwest had been blamed or suspected in at least 42 deaths, including 11 in Kentucky, nine in Arkansas, six each in Texas and Missouri, three in Virginia, two each in Oklahoma, Indiana and West Virginia and one in Ohio. Most were blamed on hypothermia, traffic accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear deployed every last one of his Army National Guardsmen, with his state still reeling after the deadly ice storm encrusted it last week.
PHOTO: AP
Beshear confirmed seven deaths late on Saturday in Kentucky were a result of the storm and said officials were checking several others.
More than half a million homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained without electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia.
Finding fuel — heating oil along with gas for cars and generators — was another struggle for those trying to tough it out at home, with hospitals and other essential services getting priority over members of the public.
The addition of 3,000 soldiers and airmen makes 4,600 guardsmen pressed into service. It is the largest call-up in Kentucky history, which Beshear called an appropriate response to a storm that cut power to more than 600,000 people, the state’s largest outage on record. Many people in rural areas cannot get out of their driveways due to debris and have no phone service, the governor said.
“With the length of this disaster and what we’re expecting to be a multi-day process here, we’re concerned about the lives and the safety of our people in their own homes and we need the manpower in some of the rural areas to go door-to-door and do a door-to-door canvass ... and make sure they’re OK,” Beshear said
Staff Sergeant Erick Duncan said he and his colleagues have been putting in long shifts to open tree-littered roads. Duncan, who manned a chain saw, said he expects the assignment to last quite a while.
“It’s a mess and we’re just in the city limits,” he said. “We’re not even out in the county yet. And there’s plenty of cities and counties to go to.”
Thousands of people were staying in motels and shelters, asked to leave their homes by authorities who said emergency teams in some areas were too strapped to reach everyone in need of food, water and warmth.
The outages disabled water systems, and authorities warned it could be days or weeks before power was restored in the most remote spots.
That uncertainty had many appealing for help and officials urging those in dark homes to leave, if they could — many were stuck in place by blocked roads and other obstacles.
From Missouri to Ohio, thousands were waiting in shelters for the power to return.
As far away as Oklahoma, around 10,000 customers still had no electricity.
Fuel shortages, a problem since the storm, spilled into the weekend, with radio stations that normally broadcast music telling people where they could get gas and oil businesses ranking customers according to how urgently they needed it.
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