By BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press Writer
TEXARKANA,
Ark. (AP)--The view from an Arkansas highway was stunning--hundreds
of ice-laden pine trees glimmering in the afternoon sun.
The view from
Wayne and Norma Murray's Texarkana home was less picturesque--an
oak tree wedged against the roof above their bedroom, its root
ball, the size of a Volkswagen beetle, pulled from the ground.
``We always
thought that if that tree ever did fall, it would fall right on
our room,'' Mrs. Murray said. ``I guess we won't have to worry
about that tree anymore.''
Thursday marked
the fourth day the Murrays and thousands of others across the
south-central United States spent without electricity, learning
to make the best of a miserable situation. Since Christmas Eve,
icy storms have snapped tree limbs and knocked out power to more
than 600,000 homes and businesses in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma
and Texas.
President
Clinton declared federal disaster areas Thursday in Oklahoma and
parts of his home state of Arkansas. About 210,000 electric customers
in Arkansas and 166,000 in Oklahoma were without power Thursday
night.
Clinton made
the Arkansas declaration after speaking with Federal Emergency
Management Agency Director James Lee Witt, who was himself without
water and electricity as he spent the holidays at his western
Arkansas farm.
Witt said
he was drinking bottled water, using runoff water to flush a commode,
and showering at nearby truck stops.
``I tried
to get Washington to send me a generator, but apparently I don't
have enough pull,'' he joked.
Arkansas electricity
customers have been told that it could be Jan. 6 before all power
is back on, while in Oklahoma some estimates reach as long as
two weeks.
``It's realistic,''
Scott McCloud, a spokesman for AEP-Southwestern Electric Power,
said of the estimates. ``This is a devastating storm.''
James Thompson,
a spokesman for Arkansas electrical company Entergy, said the
damage was similar to that caused by a large tornado, ``only it
was a much slower process.'' He said that trees around the state
``bent and bent and bent, then they finally broke.''
But tornadoes
don't do damage on this scale.
``I've never
seen anything like this. I'd take a tornado any day,'' said Mayor
Dennis Ramsey of Hope, Ark., Clinton's hometown.
Authorities
blame at least 41 deaths on the bad weather in the nation's midsection:
22 in Texas, 11 in Oklahoma, four in New Mexico, two in Arkansas
and one each in Missouri and Minnesota. A Greyhound bus rolled
over on an icy stretch of Interstate 80 in Nebraska, injuring
33 people.
In Texas,
National Guardsmen helped move trapped vehicles and rescued some
of the 1,000 drivers stranded along Interstate 20 on an icy incline
about 80 miles from Fort Worth.
Trucks jackknifed
and cars slid into ditches, forcing the closing of a nearly 20-mile
stretch of highway. Some travelers were stranded for up to 12
hours.
Thousands
of electric line workers brought in from outside the region to
help restore electricity competed with locals for hotel rooms.
In Texarkana,
motel manager Terri Roberts said the place had been full since
Christmas. The motel's computers and phones were down, but the
power was on.
With no access
to their computers, the motel stopped dealing with reservations,
even for those who had booked in advance. It became first-come-first
served.
``We've even
had people making their own beds ... because we couldn't find
employees that could get in,'' Roberts said. ``But if we just
handed them the sheets, they were glad to get a room.''
A separate
storm moved through the upper Midwest on Thursday, dropping snow
at an inch per hour in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota. Hundreds
of flights out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were
canceled.
Although the
midwestern storm has weakened, it is expected to gather strength
off the East Coast on Friday and bring heavy snow Saturday to
coastal sections of the Northeast. Large cities including Washington,
New York and Boston were forecast to see as much as a foot of
snow.
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