At least 17 people were killed in the central United States as a freezing storm left much of Oklahoma and Missouri under a thick coating of ice, with more wintry weather on the way.
A state of emergency was declared in Oklahoma, where half a million homes were left without power as lines snapped under the weight of accumulated ice and falling branches.
“If you do the math, probably one out of three Oklahomans has no electricity at this point,” Gil Broyles, a spokesman for Oklahoma Gas & Electric, said.
In Missouri, where an emergency was declared on Sunday and the National Guard put on alert, 100,000 customers had no electric heat or power, while a further 11,000 homes in southern Illinois and more than 5,000 in Kansas were also blacked out.
A layer of ice as much as 2 ½ centimetres thick coated tree limbs and power lines in parts of the region, while in Oklahoma City, the sound of branches snapping under the weight echoed through deserted streets.
Some 15 people were killed on icy highways in Oklahoma and Missouri, with four dying in “one huge cluster of an accident” involving 11 vehicles on Interstate 40 west of Okemah, Oklahoma, Highway Patrol Trooper Betsey Randolph said.
In Tulsa, firefighters have responded to dozens of structural fires caused by the storm, Sheryl Lovelady, a city spokeswoman, said. One person was killed by smoke inhalation in a storm-related fire, she reported.
In Missouri, a 92-year-old man died when a tree limb fell on his head, while a homeless person died of hypothermia in Oklahoma City, the state medical examiner’s office said.
Emergency workers rushed to help those stranded in blacked out areas of Oklahoma, as some hospitals were forced to rely on backup power generators. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers sent 50 generators and three truckloads of bottled water from Texas to distribute in affected areas.
At O’Hare International Airport, about 200 flights were cancelled, with others delayed by an average of 45 minutes, Karen Pride, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Aviation, said. Tulsa International Airport had no power for about ten hours and halted flight operations for the day, while Greyhound bus passengers were stranded overnight at a shelter in a church in Tulsa, and were joined by some local residents who had no heat.
The National Weather Service posted more ice and winter storm warnings for parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois. The icy weather stretched into the Northeast, where many schools across upstate New York were closed or started late because of slippery roads.
I never knew there were ice storms this severe.
Topic: Ice storm kills 17 in central United States (Read 1459 times)