Oklahoma struggles with another round of winter weather

Monday, January 1st 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

(AP)- Crews working to restore power to thousands of Oklahomans spent their New Year's Day atop cranes and trudging through thickly wooded problem areas _ a week after a Christmas Day ice storm knocked out electricity to much of southeast Oklahoma.

Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management, said electric crews were managing better Monday than they did the day before when up to 8 inches of snow fell across the state.

``I think the snow is continuing to cause some problems, but not like yesterday,'' Ooten said Monday night. ``There's going to be pockets where they can't get through, but we're bouncing back from yesterday.''

The number of homes and businesses without power declined to about 42,860 Monday night, Ooten said. That's down from about 70,000 who were without power Sunday morning.

A total of 11,000 Oklahoma Gas & Electric customers were still without power early Monday, authorities said. Another 6,160 customers of American Electric Power were without power, and rural electric cooperatives were working to restore electrical service to more than 25,000 customers.

Still, Ooten had only guesses about when power might be restored to all Oklahomans.

``I don't really know specifics on when it will all be back to normal,'' Ooten said. ``I know it will be longer for people whose meters were damaged or pulled off their structure or if people's electric line was pulled from their home.

``It's going to take a while.''

She said thick forests were part of the problem in restoring power. She said the small rural cooperatives, from which many Oklahomans get their power, have neither the staff nor infrastructure to effectively deal with widespread outages.

Ooten said 22 emergency shelters and six feeding centers were open across the state, down from 50 on Saturday. Shelters have closed as power in their area is turned back on.

But electricity problems weren't the only difficulties bringing pause to New Year's Eve celebrations in Oklahoma.

Officially, the deaths of 15 people have been attributed to the Christmas Day winter storm.

At least five people were killed on slick highways in the state on Sunday and Monday after a second storm blanketed the state with snow.

Hayden Barnoski, 54, of Vian was killed Monday morning when the pickup he was driving lost control on Interstate 40 in Sequoyah County and was hit by a semi-trailer, authorities said.

William Hoyman Davidson, 63, and Ila Ruth Davidson, 61, of Galena, Mo, were killed Sunday when their SUV hit a snowbank on Interstate 44 in Tulsa and plunged into the Arkansas River.

The other two accidents Sunday involved a 4-year-old Sierra Vista, Ariz., girl who died when the vehicle in which she was riding crashed near Boise City. A 19-year-old North Richland, Texas, woman was killed on I-35 in Love County.

In Oklahoma City, a Delta Airlines jet ran off a runway Sunday at Will Rogers World Airport and got stuck in the mud, airport director Luther Trent said.

The plane carrying about 140 passengers drifted off the edge of the runway about 3 p.m., driving the nose wheel into a patch of mud, Trent said. No one was injured, and passengers were driven back to the terminal in a bus.

Meanwhile, 39 counties in Oklahoma have been designated eligible for federal disaster aid.

Ooten said the disaster was shaping up to make the Christmas Day storm one of the worst in the state's recent memory. She said she hoped officials could begin to assess the damage from the storm in about a week.

``I think it would be safe to say that in the recent memories of people who I've been around here, this stands out as one of the worst,'' Ooten said. ``Personally I've lived in Oklahoma most of my life and I don't ever remember anything like this.''