From CNN staff and wire reports
More than
half a million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday
as a slow-moving ice storm moves across the south central United
States.
In the Texas
Panhandle, heavy snow combined with icy roads and subfreezing
weather, stranding thousands of travelers and forcing the closing
of government offices and businesses.
For many,
there was no telephone or water service either; the ice storm
brought down telephone lines, and the power outages disabled municipal
water pumps.
At one point
Wednesday, an estimated 590,000 homes and businesses were without
power. By late Wednesday, Arkansas authorities reported that power
had been restored to 40,000 customers.
Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee ordered the state government closed Wednesday. Energy
Arkansas said it had 4,000 workers on the job, but it might be
January 5 before power is restored to everyone.
"We've had
what is, I guess, the equivalent of a nuclear-type situation without
radioactivity, because virtually everything is shut down," Huckabee
told CNN via cell phone from the governor's mansion, where power
and phone service were out. "We have 10 or 12 counties where every
single person in that county has lost power, phone service, and
water."
Huckabee said
much of the damage was in rural areas, some of them inaccessible
because downed trees were blocking many roads.
Power outages
put much of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the dark. Residents made
their way to public taps downtown for free hot water.
"I just came
down to get a jug to make formula for the baby," said Fanessa
Davenport, also filling juice bottles with water for an 86-year-old
neighbor.
Kevin Byrd
said he had to use a chain saw to cut his way to the downtown
taps. "It looked like a tornado had been through," he said. "The
biggest thing about it is not having power. Then you don't have
your water pump."
Oklahoma
declared a disaster area
In Oklahoma,
Gov. Frank Keating declared the entire state a disaster area,
and people without heat headed to shelters.
In the town
of Ada, about half the town's residents remained without drinking
water or power where falling tree limbs continued to cause problems,
Assistant Police Chief Rick Carson said Wednesday.
"Even though
there's not much wind, the limbs are just giving up and going
down through the power lines," he said.
"Tell everyone
to stay out of Oklahoma. We have power outages throughout the
state; we have crashes everywhere," state trooper Brett Wallace
told Reuters.
In Texarkana,
which straddles the Texas-Arkansas line, officials ordered a nighttime
curfew and froze all prices to prevent some from capitalizing
on the city's troubles.
"Everywhere
you look, trees are snapped like match sticks. Power lines are
down everywhere and most of the streets are impassable because
we don't know which lines are live," said Texarkana resident Nita
Fran Hutcheson, who has had no water or electricity at her home
since Monday.
Second outage
in two weeks
In a wide
swath from New Mexico to Arkansas, 590,000 homes and businesses
were left struggling without power, while holiday travelers were
stranded far from home. Ten deaths were blamed on the weather,
including a 13-year-old girl who was killed in Arnold, Missouri,
after the pickup truck she was riding in went over the side of
a bridge and plunged 50 feet into a river.
For many across
the region, this is the second major power outage in two weeks.
In Little Rock, Arkansas, Dave Kaffenberger closed off a few rooms
of his house and gathered his family around the hearth after an
ice storm knocked out the electricity.
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| The ice storm damage in Texarkana, which straddles
the Texas-Arkansas line, has prompted officials to order a
nighttime curfew and freeze all prices |
|
"We lit a
half-dozen candles and played Clue by candlelight," Kaffenberger
said in his darkened home Wednesday. "It's an extended Christmas.
That's the way I'm looking at it."
In New Mexico,
Interstate 40 was reopened Wednesday after being closed because
of ice. But many roads in the southern part of the state remained
closed.
Storms on
the move
"At one point
it looked as if this southern storm and a midwestern storm would
meet up along the Midatlantic coast and perhaps become a nor'easter
for the weekend," CNN Weather Anchor Karen Maginnis said Wednesday
night. "However, now it appears the southern storm will eject
into the Atlantic more quickly, so the midwestern storm will be
the center of attention."
That system
will move across the upper Midwest and into the Great Lakes region
on Thursday, bringing near blizzard conditions to the northern
plains.
The weather
also caused more air travel disruptions Wednesday.
A note on
American Airlines' Web site said some of its flights from Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport were delayed. Delta Air Lines had
weather-related delays as well, according to its Web site.
The Little
Rock airport, closed since Monday, reopened Wednesday afternoon.
Hundreds of flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth.
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|
A worker tends to a tree that fell across a
Little Rock, Arkansas, street when it became weighted down
with ice Wednesday |
Changing
weather pattern
"I came South
to get away from this," said Renee Puskas, a gas station manager
in Hot Springs. "I told my kids I lived in Ohio all my life and
I've never seen anything like this."
While the
ice and snow may seem unusual for this part of the country, state
EMA spokeswoman Teri Pfeiffer said it's really the return of a
once-normal weather pattern.
"Arkansas
is in a transition zone, so what's happened in the past seven
or eight years, because of El Nino and La Nina, our winters have
been mild and we haven't had a lot of ice and snow," Pfeiffer
said. "In the past, we had ice and snow storms, and the weather
pattern is changing again.
"People just
weren't prepared this year, thinking that the winters were getting
milder."
The Associated Press and Reuters
contributed to this report.
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