Winter storm deaths at 27; utility crews race to restore power

CONCORD, N.C. -- This week's winter storm has been blamed for at least 27 deaths and cutting off power to hundreds of thousands since it blew across the Southern Plains earlier in the week, sending snow and ice from New Mexico to New York.

The deaths include a Virginia woman who froze to death after her car slid off the road and a North Carolina man whose car was hit by a falling tree as he returned from delivering blood supplies.

In New York, noted jazz saxophonist Robert Berg, 51, was killed Thursday when a cement truck collided with his SUV on a snow-slickened Long Island road.

The icy aftermath of the storm Wednesday and Thursday -- which many in the Carolinas compared to recent hurricanes for its scale of destruction -- proved worse than the storm itself. And across the East Coast, snow and ice snarled air travel and kept children home from school.

'Horrible out there'

"It's horrible out there," said Errol Carter, a lawyer from Edison, N.J. "I live less than 10 minutes from the train station, and I almost got in two accidents on the way there."

Friday brought warmer temperatures in the eastern United States, but utilities struggled to make progress as nighttime temperatures dropped to around freezing.

An armada of cherry picker trucks lined up and moved out Friday at Lowes Motor Speedway, a staging area in the race to restore power to nearly 1.5 million people in the ice-coated Carolinas.

Repair workers who have poured in from across the South were working against the clock and the ice, which continued to send tree limbs crashing onto power lines, some of which had already been repaired once.

Frustrated utilities pushed back earlier promises and acknowledged most customers won't have power back until next Wednesday night, exactly a week after a the ice storm began blowing through.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, who with South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges declared states of emergency, said he was worried too many people were choosing to ride out the cold. Only 1,600 people stayed in the state's 56 shelters Thursday night, and forecasters predicted a low of 17 on Friday night.

Easley activated the National Guard to help residents in areas where electricity wasn't expected to be restored for several days or more.

Guard members will go door-to-door to make sure people are safe and have information about local emergency shelters, he said.

Some 3,000 travelers were stranded at North Carolina's Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. Travelers faced cancellations and long flight delays at the New York City area's LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark, N.J., airports.

On the ground, highway traffic slowed to a crawl or stalled behind wrecks. Buses ran behind schedule, and commuter railroads in the New York City region added trains to cope with an increase in riders.

The steady snowfall in New York turned avenues and sidewalks treacherously slick, but tourists busily snapped photos.

"This just seems like the way New York should be, you know?" said Jennifer McDaniel of Detroit. "The snow and the lights and decorations -- it just seems right."

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On the Net:

National Weather Service: http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov

Intellicast: http://www.intellicast.com

Accuweather: http://www.accuweather.com