Thousands throughout region still without power

Much of southern Scott and New Madrid counties remained in the dark Tuesday.

A mixture of sleet and ice left 75 percent of Sikeston without power around midnight Monday because of the still-fragile condition of a substation damaged by fire last week. Though power was restored within a couple of hours, Sgt. Jim McMillen with the Sikeston Department of Public Safety said more outages could occur because of the overtaxed substation and ice accumulation. By 6 p.m. Tuesday the Sikeston Police Department was operating using generators.

As of 10 p.m., 4,589 Scott County AmerenUE customers were without power.

Just after 8 a.m., AmerenUE reported 847 outages in Sikeston's 63801 ZIP code. That number had dropped to 512 without power by Tuesday evening. Three warming stations were opened by 3 p.m., at the Miner Baptist Church of Sikeston, the Lilbourn VFW in Lilbourn, Mo., and the New Madrid Community Center in New Madrid, Mo.

In a news release, McMillen reminded residents to use caution and contact the department of public safety with power-related issues.

"If you see a downed power line, stay away from it and contact our department," McMillen said. "Do not approach any suspected downed power line. Downed lines are very dangerous and could energize objects or the ground around them."

The weather caused serious damage to at least one Sikeston business Tuesday morning. At around 3:30 a.m., store employees of the Rhodes 101 convenience store at 535 N. Main St. told the city that a lot of water was coming through the ceiling. McMillen said the store closed because of the damage and will remain closed for an undetermined amount of time.

New Madrid County

Freezing rain caused road closures and power outages in New Madrid County. By 10 p.m. Tuesday, 4,658 — 92 percent — of AmerenUE's 5,053 customers were in the dark, up from 2,417 reported Monday morning.

Two extra electric crews were called in to help the city crews and most full-time office workers stayed late Tuesday night to help answer the phones.

"We have a lot of volunteer firefighters working at the shelter and our community emergency response team," said New Madrid city clerk Marian Bock, who also worked Tuesday night answering phones at the city electric utility office. She estimated that between 50 and 75 percent of the city's customers were without power. "Some people have been repeat callers here."

Stoddard County

The storm caused the OAKS Senior Center and Stoddard County schools and transit to close and disrupted power to more than 75 percent of the county's AmerenUE customers by Tuesday evening.

Ice on power lines caused most of the power failures, according to Larry Stone with the AmerenUE office in Dexter.

More than 25 support crews were called up from as far away as St. Louis, Potosi and St. Francis County to help local crews restore power as quickly as possible.

Customers of Ozark Border Electric north of Dexter also were reportedly without power Tuesday morning, but no figures were available.

Dunklin County

Kennett city officials began receiving calls of power outages at about 1 a.m. The number of AmerenUE customers without power stood at 1,062 by 10 p.m.

City firefighter Stephen Kilbreth said the department had received calls on four possible structure fires Tuesday morning, though none destroyed the homes or caused injuries. Kilbreth also said the department had responded to "one or two medical call and various calls concerning power lines."

The Kennett Police Department reported it lost count of the number of calls it has received, but the majority of them were weather-related.

Reports compiled from the Southeast Missourian staff, Sikeston Standard-Democrat, Dexter Daily Statesman and Daily Dunklin Democrat.