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Icy Storm Wallops Central U.S.

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By KEN MILLER, The Associated Press

Published: December 11, 2007

OKLAHOMA CITY - A wintry storm caked the center of the nation with a thick layer of ice Monday, blacking out more than 600,000 homes and businesses, and more icy weather was on the way.

At least 15 deaths in Oklahoma and Missouri were blamed on the conditions, with 13 of the people killed on slick highways.

A state of emergency was declared for all of Oklahoma, where the sound of branches snapping under the weight of the ice echoed through Oklahoma City.

"You can hear them falling everywhere," Lonnie Compton said Monday as he shoveled ice off his driveway.

The National Weather Service posted ice and winter storm warnings today for parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois. Missouri declared an emergency Sunday and put the National Guard on alert.

Oklahoma utilities said a half-million customers, the biggest power outage in state history, were blacked out as power lines snapped under the weight of ice and falling tree branches. Utilities in Missouri said more than 100,000 homes and business had no power.

About 11,000 customers were blacked out in southern Illinois and more than 5,000 had no electric heat or lights in Kansas, where Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a statewide state of emergency.

Ice was as much as an inch thick on tree limbs and power lines in parts of the region.

Schools across Oklahoma were closed and some hospitals were relying on generators. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers sent 50 generators and three truckloads of bottled water from Texas to distribute to blacked-out areas of Oklahoma.

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