OCEAN ISLE BEACH, NC (AP) – A winter storm that left millions of people without power in a record-breaking cold climate claimed more lives, including three people found dead after a tornado hit a seaside town in North Carolina and four relatives who died in a fire in a home in the Houston area using a fireplace to keep warm
The storm which overloaded power grids and immobilized the Southern Plains on Tuesday, brought heavy snow and freezing rain to New England and the Deep South and left painfully low temperatures behind. The warnings of thermal sensation extended from Canada to Mexico.
In all, at least 20 deaths have been reported. Other causes include car accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning. The climate also threatened to affect the national vaccination effort COVID-19. President Joe Biden’s administration said delays in shipping and delivering vaccines are likely.
North Carolina’s Brunswick County did not notice the dangerous weather, and a tornado warning was not issued until the storm was already on the ground.
The National Meteorological Service was “very surprised at how quickly this storm intensified … and at night, when most people are at home and in bed, it creates a very dangerous situation,” said the Director of Ed Conrow Emergency Services.
In Chicago, 46 centimeters of fresh snow forced public schools to cancel face-to-face classes on Tuesday. Hours earlier, along the normally mild Gulf of Mexico, cross-country skier Sam Fagg found fresh snow on Galveston Beach, Texas.
The worst power failures in the United States occurred in Texas, affecting more than 2 million homes and businesses. More than 250,000 people also lost energy in parts of Appalachia, and another 200,000 were left without electricity after an ice storm in northwest Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks reports of utility outages. Four million people lost power in Mexico.
Texas officials requested 60 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and planned to prioritize hospitals and nursing homes. The state has opened 35 shelters for more than 1,000 occupants, the agency said.
More than 500 people sought comfort in a Houston shelter. Mayor Sylvester Turner said other heating centers were closed because they lost energy.
After losing energy on Monday, Natalie Harrell said that she, her boyfriend and four children were housed in a Gallery furniture store in Houston. The store’s heating center provided food, water and energy to charge essential electronics.
“It’s worse than a hurricane,” said Harrell. “I think we will be out for more days, it seems.”
Utilities from Minnesota to Texas have implemented continuous blackouts to lighten the load on power grids that struggle to meet the extreme demand for heat and electricity.
Blackouts lasting more than an hour began early Tuesday morning in Oklahoma City and in more than a dozen other communities, stopping electric heaters, ovens and lights just when temperatures were around minus 8 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Celsius) Negative Celsius).
Oklahoma Gas & Electric rescinded plans for more blackouts, but asked users to set thermostats to 20 degrees Celsius, avoid using large electrical appliances and turn off lights or appliances that are no longer in use.
However, Entergy began rolling out blackouts Tuesday night in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and southeastern Texas under the guidance of its network manager, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, “as a last resort and to avoid power outages more extensive and prolonged measures that could be severely affect the reliability of the power grid, ”according to a statement. New Orleans-based utility.
“Due to the extremely low temperatures in the past few days, the demand for electricity has peaked,” said the statement from Entergy. “In addition, these climatic conditions forced the disconnection of generation resources throughout the system. Implementing this load reduction across the Entergy region will help ensure an adequate reserve margin, which helps to ensure that Entergy is better positioned to handle additional extreme climates this week.
Entergy has nearly 3 million electricity customers in the four states.
Nebraska blackouts occurred amid the coldest weather on record: in Omaha, the temperature reached a minimum of 23 degrees below zero during the night (minus 30 degrees Celsius), the coldest in 25 years.
Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, said blackouts were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electrical system as a whole”.
The outages forced a Texas county to strive to administer more than 8,000 doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine after a public health facility lost power on Monday and its backup generator also failed, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for voice of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
County officials distributed the doses that could have spoiled at three hospitals, Rice University and the county prison, because there were large groups of people available who would not need to drive and the appropriate medical staff was present.
“It feels incredible. I am very grateful, ”said Harry Golen, a sophomore in college who waited almost four hours with his friends, many of them in the cold, and was one of the last people to have the injections, which otherwise would not have reached students until March or April.
Texas officials said more than 400,000 doses due now will not arrive until at least Wednesday because of the storm.
The tornado that hit Brunswick County, North Carolina, was an EF3 with winds estimated at 257 km / h, reported the weather service on Twitter.
Three people died and 10 were injured when the tornado hit a golf course community and another rural area just before midnight on Monday, destroying dozens of homes.
Sharon Benson, 63, said her roof was damaged and the garage door was torn off. The windows were broken and the nearby trees were uprooted.
“The sky lit up and there was a lot of pop-pop-popping” and thunder, she said.
Officials in several states have reported deaths from accidents on frozen roads, including two people whose vehicle slipped off a road and overturned on a waterway in Kentucky on Sunday, state police said. A Mississippi man died after losing control of his vehicle, which capsized on an icy road Monday night near Starkville, Oktibbeha County coroner Michael Hunt said on Tuesday.
In Texas, three young children and their grandmother died in the fire in the Houston area, which probably started while they were using a fireplace to warm themselves during a power outage, a fire official said. And in Oregon, authorities on Tuesday confirmed the deaths of four people last weekend in the metropolitan area of Portland from carbon monoxide poisoning.
At least 13 children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, the hospital said in a social media post, which warned that families were “taking extreme steps to heat their homes” – with propane or burning diesel engines and generators, gas ovens and table stoves. One parent died of toxic fumes, pediatrician Phillip Scott told Fort Worth’s KTVT television station.
Other deaths in Texas included a woman and a girl who died of suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in Houston in a house without electricity from a car left on in an attached garage, and two men found on the Houston area roads who probably died. in sub-zero temperatures, enforcement officials said.
In western Tennessee, a 10-year-old boy died after falling into an ice-covered lake on Sunday during a winter storm, firefighters said.
Several cities had record low: In Minnesota, the Hibbing / Chisholm weather station recorded minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 39 degrees Celsius). Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26 Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius).
At noon, more than 2,700 US flights were canceled, led by more than 800 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and more than 700 at the Bush Intercontinental in Houston.
Authorities begged residents to stay home on Tuesday. About 100 school systems closed, delayed opening or moved to remote classes in Alabama, where meteorologists said conditions cannot improve until temperatures rise above freezing on Wednesday afternoon.
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Associated Press officials in the United States contributed to this report.