Officials: Power-line repairs will take days in parts of state

Residents and business owners in northwest Missouri will likely be without power for days after an ice storm left entire towns in the frigid dark.

President Bush declared a state of emergency in Missouri on Wednesday and mobilized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist local authorities. FEMA spokeswoman Ashley Small said the agency will give financial assistance to state agencies as they remove debris and do other cleanup work.

About 400 utility linemen are working to restore power to roughly 65,000 homes and businesses in the northwest after ice-laden tree limbs crashed onto power lines and left at least eight small towns completely without power, said Al Butkus, a spokesman for utility Aquila Inc.

"We have a lot of trees down ... lots of infrastructure that needs to be put up," Butkus said. "This is not going to be quick. It's just a massive project now because of the storm."

In the town of Lamar, Nation Guardsmen and local sheriff's deputies knocked on doors in outlying rural areas to contact elderly or disabled residents who might need assistance, said National Guard Capt. Bob Spurgeon.

About 65 people had taken shelter in the Lamar Armory, but most people in the area were getting help from their neighbors, Spurgeon said.

"This community is a safety net in itself," Spurgeon said. "There's just a network of good people. So the vulnerable people seem to be getting help quicker than they could have imagined."

But ice was likely to build on untreated roadways as temperatures fell into the 20s during Wednesday afternoon, making work tougher for power crews that are coming to the region from as far away as Kentucky and Colorado.

Power has largely been restored in central Missouri, where roughly 42,000 homes and business lost power when the winter storm first hit this weekend. St. Louis-based AmerenUE reported that just 6,400 customers remained without power Wednesday morning.

Shelters opened Tuesday at a community center and a church in Maryville, though most people were either toughing it out or staying with relatives.

Members of the Missouri National Guard arrived to help transport people to shelter, clean up debris, and perhaps go door-to-door to check on some residents.