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Monday, Feb. 02, 2009

Thaw brings some relief

The buzz of chain saws that echoed across the state Sunday offered some reassurance five days after an ice storm shut down most of Kentucky. And, late Sunday, officials reported a breakthrough in restoring power to beleaguered Western Kentucky.

A brief reprieve from the crippling cold allowed residents, utility workers, state road crews and National Guard troops activated in the wake of the storm to make headway in removing the avalanche of tree limbs that came crashing down under the weight of ice last week.

"We are beginning to see some light and rays of hope as some conditions improve," Gov. Steve Beshear said in a statement released by the Division of Emergency Management. "But I am realistic that we still have a long way to go and much work to do."

Most of the difficult recovery and power restoration will be in Western Kentucky, where two major arteries for electricity and thousands of smaller lines remain down.

At least seven deaths are being blamed on the storm, while officials are investigating whether 11 more are related to last week's weather, said Monica L. French, spokeswoman for the Kentucky emergency management office.

Of the seven confirmed deaths, two were elderly Kentuckians who died of hypothermia after days without power in their mobile homes in Monticello and White Plains.

On Sunday, two young brothers died in a house fire in Louisville, but it's uncertain whether the blaze was related to the weather.

Three other deaths initially thought to be weather-related were not, French said.

The state still has 138 shelters open. Of those, 96 are operated by the Red Cross, which has housed 3,587 displaced Kentuckians. An additional 3,000 citizens have used local shelters.

However, Lexington closed its Emergency Operations Center Sunday as the number of powerless residents ducked under 10,000.

Power outages

Sunday afternoon, 8,900 Kentucky Utilities Co. customers still were without power in Lexington. About 1,000 Fayette County homes and businesses served by Blue Grass Energy also were out.

Statewide, 32,000 customers of the Tennessee Valley Authority remained in the dark, said TVA spokeswoman Myra Ireland.

But the number of electricity-starved customers of state-regulated utility companies took a steep dive Sunday, as those companies dropped their totals from 400,000 early Sunday to about 290,000 that night, Andrew Melnykovych, spokesman for the Public Service Commission, said at 11 p.m.

Big Rivers Electric Corp., which provides electricity for a large swath of west Kentucky, made key progress on major transmission lines Sunday. That enabled one if its utilities, Kenergy, to reconnect 10,000 customers. Kenergy, which serves the Owensboro-Henderson region, still has 26,000 without power, Melnykovych said.

Kentucky's total outage number heading into Monday was half of the state record 700,000 who didn't have electricity earlier in the week.

KU still had 4,350 customers out in Madison County, 3,350 in Woodford, 1,300 in Scott, 750 in Clark, 200 in Jessamine and 100 in Bourbon County late Sunday, Melnykovych said. Tens of thousands more KU customers remain out in west Kentucky.

Blue Grass Energy, which serves part of Fayette County and several surrounding counties, had 13,700 without power as of 8 p.m. Sunday — fewer than half the customers who were out during the peak of the outages on Wednesday.

In Danville and Boyle County, which was hit particularly hard, 3,300 KU customers were without electricity Sunday afternoon, down from 6,450 who were out at 8 a.m.

In Jefferson County, the number of Louisville residents in the dark was down to 83,000 by Sunday evening from nearly 94,000 earlier in the day.

National Guard at work

More than 2,500 of the state's 4,600 National Guard troops activated by the governor have reported for duty, Beshear told reporters after touring a makeshift shelter in Elizabethtown Sunday.

Downed phone lines made notification of troops more difficult, delaying the deployment, he said.

Beshear toured western counties Saturday and was in Hardin, Meade and Marion counties on Sunday.

Thousands of National Guard troops used chain saws to cut their way into remote communities Sunday, freeing some residents to get out of their driveways for the first time in nearly a week.

The soldiers went door-to-door handing out chili and beef stew rations to people cooped up in their powerless homes as authorities ratcheted up the relief effort for what Beshear has called the biggest natural disaster ever to hit the state.

The sight of Humvees rolling up one street in rural Grayson County sent children bouncing off the walls inside the generator-powered house where Bryan Bowling and 18 other people have been hunkering down by a fireplace.

"The kids were looking out the windows and yelling, 'Yay! We're saved!'" said Bowling, 30, who has a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old. "It's just good to know that people care."

By Sunday afternoon, the National Guard had cleared 60 counties with door-to-door canvassing. Ninety-three of the state's 120 counties had declared emergencies in the storm's wake.

More needs

Because of a statewide emergency declaration, Kentucky has received help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA has distributed fuel for large-scale generators, including the 50 units the agency provided Thursday, and dispatched portable radio towers and satellite trucks to Western Kentucky, which had little to no communications lines last week.

Eight water districts, most in west Kentucky, remain idle: the Lovelaceville Water Co., Fredonia Water Dept., Earlington Water & Sewer, Mortons Gap Water Dept., Nortonville Water Works, White Plains Water System, Nebo Water District and Grand Rivers Water System. An additional 54 water districts have boil orders in effect.