FEMA head tours areas recovering from ice storm

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Federal disaster chief Joe Allbaugh spent several hours Friday touring fire- and tree-damaged spots in Missouri and Kansas, where hundreds of thousands of residents lost power in the middle of winter.

The thousands of utility customers in Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., still without power Friday after last week's ice storm should have electricity by today, the mayors of those cities said. At the peak of the outage, more than 420,000 customers were without electricity.

The fire risk also jumped 10-fold because of damaged electrical connections caused by felled power lines. Kansas City, Mo., firefighters handled 3,700 calls in one night, including six structure fires at once.

President Bush issued disaster declarations Thursday for both Missouri and Kansas, triggering the release of millions of dollars in federal funds to help the Kansas City region recover from the storm.

After touring the metropolitan area, Allbaugh gathered with officials from both states at a Kansas City, Kan., neighborhood where AmeriCorps volunteers were cutting limbs that had fallen from trees under the weight of ice.

"This is a day where Kansas and Missouri are coming together," said Kansas Gov. Bill Graves.

Local governments on both sides of the state line have estimated public damage and recovery costs at nearly $50 million.