: Okay, so this one is "a stretch". :) It says 7 x
: 7000 people were without electricity, in a user base of 8 x
: 80,000 customers - interesting numbers, anyway: -----

...and now they're saying 7x10,000 are without, in a tri-state area:

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Wednesday January 3 12:53 AM ET
Some 70,000 Remain in the Dark Due to Ice Storm

By Steve Barnes

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Reuters) - About 70,000 people in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas remained without power as the effects of a Christmas Day ice storm lingered.

Officials said 20,000 repair workers were slowly restoring an electrical system devastated when thousands of miles of power lines were knocked down by ice-laden trees.

A New Year's storm topped the sheet of ice with up to eight inches of snow, adding to the difficult conditions.

At least 57 deaths have been blamed on the storms, the latest being a utility worker who was electrocuted on Tuesday while clearing tree limbs from a wire near Hope, Arkansas, the home town of President Clinton.

Officials said it would be this weekend before power is fully restored in the three states, where at one time more than half a million customers were without electricity.

``We still have people in remote mountainous areas that we've been unable to reach because of icy roads and debris. Power crews can't get in there, nor can emergency vehicles or ambulances,'' said Teri Pfeiffer, spokeswoman for the Arkansas emergency management department.

The conditions may have played a part in a tragedy on Monday when two boys in Marion County, Arkansas, died in a house fire that rescue workers could not reach for four hours because of icy roads, officials said.

In Texas, a bus flipped over on an icy highway 260 miles west of Dallas on Tuesday, injuring 34 of the 37 people on board. Six of the victims were admitted to a Big Spring, Texas, hospital, but none were in critical condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

In Oklahoma, ice and snow still slickened many roads on Tuesday, but Brad Craine, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said conditions were improving.

The number of people without electricity in the state had dropped to 22,000 and repair crews were picking up speed, he said.

``It's starting to look good,'' Craine said.

The New Year's storm moved east after hitting the ice-stricken states and dumped snow on an unseasonably cold southern part of the country.

Temperatures throughout the region were 15 to 20 degrees below normal, but forecasters said a warming trend would soon set in.

They said temperatures would climb into the 40s on Wednesday in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, followed by highs in the 50s and 60s the rest of the week.

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