Ice Storm Causes Blackouts, Death

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Ice Storm Causes Blackouts, Death

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By KEN MILLER, Associated Press Writer
53 minutes ago

OKLAHOMA CITY - Roads were treacherous Monday from the Plains into
parts of the Northeast as a storm spread a coating of ice and freezing
rain that blacked out a more than half-million homes and businesses. At
least 13 traffic deaths were linked to icy roads.

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Winter weather warnings and advisories were posted along a cold front that stretched from Texas to New Hampshire. The wintry weather was expected to continue through midweek.

A state of emergency was declared for the entire state of Oklahoma,
said Michelann Ooten, spokeswoman for the state Department of Emergency
Management. Fifty industrial generators and three truckloads of bottled
water were to be shipped to blacked-out areas. Missouri had declared an emergency on Sunday and put the National Guard on alert.

Oklahoma
utilities said some 400,000 customers were blacked out as power lines
snapped under the weight of ice and falling tree branches, and
utilities in Missouri said more than 100,000 homes and business had no
power there. Roughly 11,000 were blacked out in southern Illinois.

The sound of branches snapping echoed through Oklahoma City neighborhoods.

"You can hear them falling everywhere," Lonnie Compton said Monday as he shoveled ice off his driveway.

Ice was as much as an inch thick on tree limbs and power lines in parts of Missouri.

Schools across Oklahoma were closed and some hospitals were relying on backup power generators.

Tulsa International Airport had no power and halted flight operations, and most morning flights at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City were canceled because of icy runways.

Greyhound Bus service was disrupted, stranding passengers, some of whom spent the night in a shelter in a church in downtown Tulsa. They were joined by some local residents who had no heat.

There was no way to estimate when power might be restored, said Oklahoma Gas & Electric spokesman Gil Broyles.

"This is a big one, we've got a massive situation here and it's
probably going to be a week to 10 days before we get power on to
everybody," said Ed Bettinger, a spokesman for Public Service Company.
"It looks like a war zone."

The Oklahoma City suburb of Jones, a town of 2,500 people, had very
low water pressure because there was no electricity to run well pumps,
and firefighters said an early morning fire destroyed most of the local
high school.

The icy weather stretched into the Northeast, where many schools
across upstate New York were closed or started late because of icy
roads.

On ice-covered Interstate 40 west of Okemah, Okla., four people died in "one huge cluster of an accident" that involved 11 vehicles, said Highway Patrol Trooper Betsey Randolph.

Eight other people also died on icy Oklahoma roads, and Missouri had
one death on a slippery highway. In addition, a transient died of
hypothermia in Oklahoma City, the state medical examiner's office said.

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Latzke in Oklahoma City and Cheryl Wittenauer in St. Louis contributed to this report.