By Steve Barnes
LITTLE ROCK,
Ark. (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people shivered in the
cold Friday as an army of utility workers fought to restore electricity
to the ice-stricken U.S. heartland.
About 400,000
customers in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma still had no power four
days after a Christmas Day storm swept through, leaving a 900-mile-long
swath of ice and snow, thousands of miles of downed power lines
and a death toll of at least 42 people, officials said.
More than
11,000 workers from 23 states were brought in by area utilities
to repair power lines, but damage was so widespread that electricity
may not be fully restored for two weeks, said Arkansas emergency
management director Bud Harper.
As quickly
as lines were being repaired, others were damaged by falling branches
still laden with ice or, in some cases, trees that were bouncing
back to normal positions as they thawed out, said Tim Hartley,
spokesman of Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co.
In Oklahoma,
the number of people without power increased from 149,000 Thursday
to 153,000 Friday, said Michelann Ooten, spokeswoman for the state's
emergency management department.
Utility officials said the ice storm was one of the worst to hit
the region and came just two weeks after a frigid blast of nearly
equal magnitude.
``We're just
recovering from the last one,'' said Hugh McDonald, president
of utility firm Energy Corp's Arkansas division.
Drinking Spring
Water
He told CNN
that the worst hit area in Arkansas was the resort town of Hot
Springs, which lost all power, forcing residents to draw drinking
water from the springs that made the area famous.
``Hot Springs is our worst hit area. (It is) ground zero of this
storm,'' he said of the town of 35,000 about 40 miles southwest
of Little Rock.
The town of
McAlester in southeastern Oklahoma also suffered a complete blackout
after one of the main transmission lines in the area was knocked
out of service Thursday.
The National
Guard was called in to maintain order when looters pillaged several
stores, officials said.
Local newspapers
reported that residents from rural areas were walking into town
from miles away to reach Red Cross shelters because they had no
electricity, water or food and roads were still too treacherous
for driving.
``We had one
pack of hot dogs and one loaf of bread. That's what we ate for
three days, (then) we decided we needed to get into town somehow,''
Lisa Taylor told the Tulsa World after walking four miles and
hitchhiking another 20 to McAlester.
The damage
was not limited to power lines. Alltel Corp, Arkansas' largest
cellular phone provider, said at the height of the storm 87 phone
towers were knocked out by the ice. Alltel spokesman Andrew Moreau
said service had been seriously affected, but was gradually returning
to normal on Friday.
Martha Sue
Abney, a sheriff's dispatcher in the southwest Arkansas town of
Ashdown, said main roads in the region were much more passable
Friday, but still slick in spots.
Throughout
the region, trees were still covered with ice because temperatures
hovered around freezing and were not expected to rise for several
days, forecasters said.
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