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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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