Heat, power outages continue assault on East, Midwest

An unrelenting wave of stifling heat continued to blanket the East and Midwest on Monday as millions of people struggled without power for a third straight day.

By Parker Michels-Boyce, AP

A car crushed by a fallen tree on Carrington Road in Lynchburg, Va., on Sunday.

By Parker Michels-Boyce, AP

A car crushed by a fallen tree on Carrington Road in Lynchburg, Va., on Sunday.

About 2 million customers from North Carolina to New Jersey and as far west as Illinois were without power Monday morning. And utility officials said that for many the power would likely be out for several more days.

Since Friday, severe weather has been blamed for at least 22 deaths, most from trees falling on homes and cars. The culprit was a ferocious summer storm that cut a swath of destruction Friday night across 11 states, toppling trees, knocking out traffic lights, and sending thousands of people to shelters and into community pools to escape the heat.

The heat wave that began last week was expected to drive temperatures into the 100s from Indianapolis to Atlanta through the Fourth of July holiday.

The worst of the outages remained in the areas around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. To alleviate commuter congestion Monday, federal and state officials gave many workers the option of staying home. Federal agencies opened in Washington, but non-emergency employees had the option of taking leave or working from home. Maryland's governor also gave state workers wide leeway for staying out of the office.

Heat warnings have been issued for parts of Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio. In St. Louis, the National Weather Service warned of "dangerous heat" as temperatures climb to 106 degrees on Monday.

State public health officials have issued a boil-water advisory for all of West Virginia, where Environmental Health Services Director Barbara Taylor said statewide power outages related to the Friday night storm have put many water supplies at risk, and the advisory will remain in effect until further notice.

Since a storm pushed a tree through the roof of her Beckley, W.Va., home, Emma Patrick, says she's been living with a tangle of electrical wires. "These electrical wires are all in my house, all in my roof, all over the doors," Patrick says. "I am 91 years old with cancer. I am terrified to move around. I don't know if these wires are live or dead."

"The electric company is saying; 'You just have to wait.' I have been calling and calling and calling and these people act like they just do not care."

In Ohio, about 445,000 residents and businesses were without power in the aftermath of the state's worst storm since 2008, when it was battered by the remnants of Hurricane Ike. About 200 National Guard members were going door-to-door in the Columbus and Dayton areas Monday to check on residents who might need help. Columbus planned to open fire hydrants to help residents cool off.

"It makes me remember what life was like when I was a kid," said Terry Ann Grove, 71 , buying ice, bread and peanut butter at one of a handful of open stores in Newark, Ohio. "It's worse now because we're used to air-conditioning and McDonald's any time you want it."

Grove spent a day with a daughter who had power in Columbus, 45 minutes away, but returned to be home even though power wasn't expected until this weekend. "That's what porches are for, I guess," she said.

In nearby Granville, nobody had electricity, except for a few emergency generators. Denison University closed and sent students home. However, the village's four-day July Fourth fair was scheduled to start Wednesday -- with or without power -- powered by generators supplied by the amusement ride company.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency, saying the storms caused the most widespread, non-hurricane-related power outage in that state's history. A wastewater treatment plant in Lynchburg lost power and discharged at least 250,000 gallons of water into the James River.

"This is not a one-day situation," McDonnell said. "It is a multiday challenge."

With no power at his home, barista Morgan Smith has been sleeping on the floor of Market Street Coffee in rural Purcellville, Va., for the last two nights. The store - which never lost power - is one of the few places in the western Loudoun County town with free wifi, and Monday morning, was busy with people charging cell phones and typing on laptops.

"People have been very flustered," Smith said. "Exhausted."

In the shop, Anna Novaes of nearby Lovettsville caught up on work while her daughter, Anna Luiza Mendonca, used her own laptop to take an online English class. The family lost power Friday night, and utility NOVEC forecast the outage would last until Tuesday afternoon.

"We've had to be creative," Novaes said. "We've been sleeping in the basement because it's fresher and cooler down there. And we've been going to the gym to take showers."

John Swift who lost power at his home in a suburb of Richmond, Va., toughed out the power outage without complaint. The heat, he said, was the "biggest nuisance."

"I've got a camp stove. I've got cold showers. I don't watch TV. It's not a big deal," said Swift, 60.

Already, the heat wave has "broken hundreds of daily records and quite a few all-time records," said Weather Service meteorologist Katie LaBelle. "The heat is actually a very significant threat, especially with all the power outages. Coming behind that storm, with all the damage it caused, reacting to the heat is a high priority, making sure people can find cool places while they wait for the power to come back on."

Weekend temperatures topped 109 in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Meteorologists in Jacksonville said the combination of 100-degree temperatures and high humidity there made it feel like 118.

Some states declared emergencies and activated disaster-response agencies. Governors in New Jersey and Ohio called out the National Guard.

Officials focused on the most vulnerable residents: children, the sick and the elderly.

In Washington, D.C., officials canceled summer school for Monday as they continued to assess storm damage. The city opened libraries and recreation centers and extended the hours at community pools to give residents without power respite from the heat. The city dispatched National Guard troops to powerless intersections to direct traffic and keep people away from debris and downed power lines.

Maryland opened 74 cooling stations to help residents cope with the heat and was canvassing hospitals and nursing homes to ensure they have enough power to keep elderly and sick residents cool, Maryland Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ed McDonough said. The number of people without power is similar to power outages following hurricanes, he said.

"That's still an awful lot of people without power in the extreme heat we're having now," McDonough said. "It's still an event that's going to take days instead of hours. We didn't have the kind of warning you have with hurricane so they couldn't stage repair crews ahead of time."

In western Pennsylvania, power had been restored to 95% of the 63,000 customers who suffered outages during the storm. The rest were expected to have electricity back late Monday.

Contributing: Gary Strauss, Anthony DeBarros and Natalie DiBlasio in McLean, Va., Dennis Cauchon in Ohio and the Associated Press

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New England snow snarls holiday travel, sparks outages (Reuters)

CONWAY, Mass (Reuters) – A wintry storm socked New England states with a mix of heavy snow and freezing rain on Wednesday, sparking power outages and delaying some pre-Thanksgiving flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Roughly 17,000 customers from Maine to New York were without electricity by midafternoon after heavy snow toppled trees, limbs and power lines in some places.

Rain eased up in the Mid-Atlantic after downpours overnight, but as much as 10 inches of snow was forecast across the higher elevations of upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine by afternoon, when the storm was expected to end, the National Weather Service said.

" high-impact winter storm will adversely affect holiday travel early this morning and into this afternoon," NWS said in a winter storm warning.

"People should plan their travel accordingly and be prepared to allow plenty of extra time to reach their destination."

By midafternoon, power outages included 9,800 customers in Maine, 3,100 in New Hampshire, 2,800 in Vermont, and roughly 1,000 customers in New York.

In southern Vermont, utility crews scrambled to repair lines knocked out by 8 inches of heavy wet snow, said Central Vermont Public Service spokeswoman Christine Rivers.

In Maine, up to 10 inches of snow was predicted for the mid-state region around Bangor and Orono, with freezing rain expected along the coast. State police urged drivers to go slow as roads turn slippery or to avoid road travel altogether, if possible.

The day before Thanksgiving is a notoriously busy travel day, as friends and families gather to share the annual feast to commemorate the Pilgrims' celebration of the good harvest of 1621.

On the roads, some 38.2 million Americans are expected to drive 50 miles or more away from home between November 23 and 27, up 4 percent from last year and the highest since 2007, said travel group AAA.

Airports were bracing for roughly 23.2 million people expected to fly U.S. carriers' domestic and international routes over the Thanksgiving holiday period, according to industry group ATA.

While there were no major tie-ups at Boston's Logan Airport, numerous planes had slight delays and several flights to New York City and Toronto were canceled, said Massport's Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella.

"Yesterday we handled about 100,000 people and we expect to do the same, or somewhere near there, today," Orlandella said.

New England carrier Cape Air canceled most flights to or from Maine, New Hampshire, New York's Adirondacks region and Vermont due to the bad weather, Orlandella said.

"The heavy snow has avoided major cities in the Northeast - it's been well north, and north of Boston -- but these cities got hit with a lot of rain last night, and locally gusty winds, and that has flights backed up," said Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.

With the storm moving out to sea overnight, strong winds currently buffeting New York City should die down by Thursday morning for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, Sosnowski said.

The parade's huge inflatable balloons typically are grounded when winds exceed a danger threshold of about 34 miles per hour, Sosnowski said.

"There is some 'canyon effect' there in New York City - the air rushes in between the buildings. But tomorrow, winds should average 8 - 15 miles per hour, with gusts to 25," he said.

Amtrak had no storm-related problems with its northeastern train service by midmorning, said spokesman Cliff Cole.

In the Pacific Northwest, a strong storm that pounded the region in prior days had tapered off, but a second one was seen delivering fierce winds to the area on Thanksgiving Day, forecasters said.

The Cascade Mountains, the Coastal Range and the Rockies also may get over a foot of snow in the next two days, the National Weather Service said.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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Tempers flare over 6 days of Conn. power outages (AP)

HARTFORD, Conn. – Tempers are snapping as fast as the snow-laden branches that brought down power wires across the Northeast last weekend, with close to 300,000 Connecticut customers still in the dark and the state's biggest utility warning them not to threaten or harass repair crews.

Angry residents left without heat as temperatures drop to near freezing overnight have been lashing out at Connecticut Light & Power: accosting repair crews, making profane criticisms online and suing. In Simsbury, a hard-hit suburban town of about 25,000 residents, National Guard troops deployed to clear debris have been providing security outside a utility office building.

At a shelter at Simsbury High School, resident Stacy Niezabitowski, 53, said Friday she would love to yell at someone from Connecticut Light & Power but hadn't seen any of its workers.

"Everybody is looking for someplace to vent — not a scapegoat, just someplace to vent your anger so somebody will listen and do something," said Niezabitowski, who was having lunch at the shelter with her 21-year-old daughter. "Nobody is doing anything."

The October nor'easter knocked out power to more than 3 million homes and business across the Northeast, including 830,000 in Connecticut, where outages now exceed those of all other states combined. Connecticut Light & Power has blamed the extent of the devastation partly on overgrown trees in the state, where it says some homeowners and municipalities have resisted the pruning of limbs for reasons including aesthetics.

The company called the snowstorm and resulting power outages "an historic event" and said it was focused on getting almost all power back on by Sunday night.

For some residents still dealing with outages, no excuse is acceptable.

In Avon, a Farmington Valley town where 85 percent of customers were still without power on Friday, town manager Brandon Robertson said he faulted CL&P for an "absolutely unacceptable and completely avoidable" situation. He said the high school that is being used as an emergency shelter was still running on a generator. Although public works crews had cleared most of the town roads, he said, more than 25 still were blocked as they waited for CL&P crews to clear power lines.

"Our residents are angry. We're angry," he said. "It's just really shocking."

The person who has taken the brunt of the public scorn is CL&P's president and chief operating officer, Jeffrey D. Butler. He has been appearing with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy at daily news briefings, but he was left to face a grilling by the media on his own Thursday night when the governor left the room after criticizing the slow pace of power restoration.

Butler said he was sorry so many residents have been left without power for so long during the chilly nights. He said Friday that his own house in the Farmington Valley has been without power since a generator failed, and he urged customers to remember the extent of the damage.

"People need to keep in perspective the magnitude of damage," he said.

The outages have driven thousands of people into shelters in New England and have led to several deaths, including eight in Connecticut.

In North Brookfield, Mass., an 86-year-old woman was found dead Thursday in her unheated home, and her 59-year-old son was taken to a hospital with symptoms of hypothermia, subnormal body temperature. The local fire chief said it was unfortunate they had not reached out to authorities or neighbors for help.

In New Jersey, authorities said fumes from a gasoline-powered generator are believed to have caused the deaths of an elderly couple discovered hours before electricity was restored to their home in rural Milford, near Pennsylvania, on Thursday evening.

For many without power, the past week has been a blur of moving between friends' homes or hotel rooms with occasional visits to their own houses to feed pets and check, in vain, for electricity.

Glastonbury resident Alison Takahashi, 17, said she has bunked with friends and, for a few nights, with her parents in a hotel 45 minutes away, the only opening they could find after the storm. She said her brother, a high school freshman, also has moved like a nomad between friends' homes all week, heading to the next when he worried he'd started wearing out his welcome.

"The cellphones are our life lines right now," said Takahashi, a Glastonbury High School senior. "It's the only way to know where everybody is, and if you forget your charger and your phone is dead, you can't reach anybody."

Some Connecticut residents have vented their frustration through dark humor on the Internet, turning to social media websites to ridicule the utility — often with profanity. One person tweeted: "Really (pound)CL&P? A hamster on a wheel would be a better power source."

A few particularly irate power customers have taken their anger out on utility crews.

CL&P spokeswoman Janine Saunders said some hostile customers have approached the crews, but she declined to provide details. A police officer posted outside the utility's office building in Simsbury along with a National Guard soldier said line crews had been threatened and they wanted to make sure people could complain without letting things get out of hand.

The utility urged the public via Twitter not to harass or threaten the line workers.

Saunders said the utility understands what people are going through and has stressed to customer service employees that they need to be empathetic.

"If people want to vent, call us, see us on Facebook," she said. "We're doing our best to try to respond to people and answer questions in those medium. But let the folks out in the field do their job."

In Massachusetts, where tens of thousands of customers were still without power, the National Grid said in a statement that there have been "only a couple isolated incidents" and that most customers have been thanking crews for their work: "They are demonstrating their appreciation by bringing crews coffee and food."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asked state utility regulators on Friday to conduct a formal investigation into how the state's major power companies prepared for and responded to the outages.

In Connecticut, CL&P has promised to restore power to 99 percent of its 1.2 million customers by Sunday night. Butler, the president, said more than 1,740 crews were working and the utility was prioritizing schools and polling sites for elections on Tuesday.

Simsbury resident Chris Gauthier, 47, said he was frustrated the power lines weren't maintained better before the storm, but he said he was too busy to worry about who to blame. Every day, he wakes up before the rest of his family to start a fire in his den's fireplace. He and neighbors were clearing a dozen fallen trees around his house with hand saws Friday as National Guard troops removed debris from the street.

"I have better things to do than dwelling on who's to blame and stuff like that," he said. "There are trees to clear and these guys (his three children) to feed and keep warm."

First Selectman Mary Glassman, of Simsbury, said many homes are still not reachable by car because of downed trees and power cables, and officials are concerned for the residents' safety as people in cold houses resort to driving across power lines to seek shelter elsewhere.

"We're concerned people are getting to their wits' end," she said.

Some business owners already were planning to pursue compensation from CL&P for their losses.

In Canton, Asylum Hair Salon owner Scott Simmons filed a negligence lawsuit against the utility to make up for $1,000 in lost business from Saturday to Wednesday. He said other businesses owners who still don't have power are taking a much bigger hit.

"I just think it was completely mishandled," Simmons said of CL&P's response to the outages.

A CL&P spokeswoman declined to comment on Simmons' claims.

____

Associated Press writers Pat Eaton-Robb in Simsbury and Dave Collins and Stephanie Reitz in Hartford contributed to this report.

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Storm kills Amish teen, power outages in Northeast (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Mid-Atlantic is expected to be battered by another round of severe weather over the weekend just as a previous series of storms and heat subside.

Damaging winds, hail and lightning were expected on Saturday during the late afternoon or evening as the threat of severe weather loomed in New York, Pennsylvania and south through Virginia, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist John Feernick.

The latest severe weather predictions come on the heels of Thursday's lightning storms that left thousands in the Northeast without power and killed an Amish teenager rushing to bring in hay before the rain struck.

Thunderstorms had rumbled through the region late Thursday, marked by dramatic and deadly lightning strikes.

Before the rain reached southeastern Pennsylvania, Levi Lantz, 13, was working his Amish family's farm in Christiana Borough when he was struck by lighting and killed, according to Eric Bieber, chief deputy coroner of Lancaster County.

Lantz was baling hay with his father when he was electrocuted by the lightning, Bieber said. Lantz's father was driving a team of horses about 30 feet away from his son and felt a slight tingling sensation from the electrical charge, he said.

"They were trying to get the hay in before the rain started," Bieber said.

Further west, in Tennessee, a second possible weather related death on Thursday was reported at the Bonnaroo music festival, which was gripped by stifling heat. The body of a 32-year-old woman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was found outside her tent at the festival and heat exhaustion may have played a role, authorities said.

Throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a line of severe thunderstorms on Thursday brought strong winds and hail to communities from Washington, D.C., to Maine, according to National Weather Service reports.

Wind, downpours and lightning strikes in Connecticut caused damage and more than 140,000 power outages at the peak, the state's emergency management agency reported.

Later on Friday, 42,000 customers remained without power in what was expected to be a multi-day outage, according to emergency management officials.

New York officials reported roughly 13,000 customers remained in the dark statewide on Friday at mid-day with the bulk of outages in the lower Hudson Valley. Power was expected to be restored fully by midnight on Saturday, officials said.

The intense weather ushered in more moderate temperatures after days of unseasonable heat.

Temperatures across the region were expected to remain warm in some spots, but Friday's weather "is going to be a lot more tolerable than the last two days," said John Koch, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

After the weekend storm system passes, cooler air was expected to bring some relief to the Northeast early next week, according to AccuWeather.com.

(Reporting by Lauren Keiper and Daniel Lovering; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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