Keating tours ice-ravaged McAlester; death toll rises to 13

Saturday, December 30th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) _ Blankets, cots and generators poured into southeast Oklahoma on Friday, but emergency officials urged the thousands who remained without power to look out for each other.

Some southeast Oklahoma residents might be without electricity through next week, when bitterly cold temperatures are forecast, power companies warned.

Michelann Ooten, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management, urged southeast Oklahoma residents to check on neighbors and offer them rides to shelters if needed.

``We're hoping that once again Oklahomans are proving the best neighbors,'' she said ``If you know someone who doesn't have power don't assume they know where the shelter is.''

Beatrice Sam and her 91-year-old husband, John, toughed it out in their cold McAlester home for four days before they finally got a ride to a local Red Cross shelter.

John Sam left the hospital a week ago after suffering a heart attack. The Sams managed to stay warm by piling on four blankets, a thick bedspread and quilt.

Mrs. Sam said that when they got up to go to the bathroom, they'd crawl back in bed and shiver until they got warm.

``I probably could have toughed it out, but he can't,'' Mrs. Sam said. ``Some people are still out there toughing it out.''

While some residents evacuated to shelters, others stayed home and tried to cope with the aftermath of a winter storm that felled trees from one horizon to the other and coated the landscape in frigid crystal.

Gov. Frank Keating toured the McAlester area by helicopter Friday and said he was awed by the damage wrought by a winter storm that caused at least 13 deaths and shut off electricity and water to thousands.

``It looked like a whole series of weeping willows bowed over with ice,'' Keating said after the surveying the damage with his wife, Maj. Gen. Steven Cortright of the Oklahoma National Guard and state emergency management director Albert Ashwood.

Residents in the city of more than 16,000 have been without electricity and water intermittently since Tuesday, although about half the city had power Friday.

Keating said the geographical scope of the disaster was unprecedented in Oklahoma and praised volunteers for their efforts as he toured a Red Cross shelter and spoke with residents.

The National Guard transported water, cots and blankets to affected southeastern Oklahoma communities and volunteer groups offered aid.

Electric crews worked through the night and into the day Friday to restore service to several thousand Oklahomans. More than 104,000 remained without power Friday evening.

Crews from Lousiana, Missouri, Texas and Kansas assisted AEP-PSO crews from Oklahoma. But the company urged residents to prepare for the possibility of a weekend without power.

``In some areas in the southeast part of the state, it could be as long as 10 days,'' spokeswoman Andrea Chancellor said. ``It's not all areas, of course. It's not every customer.''

AEP-PSO spokesman Stan Whiteford said the heavy accumulation of ice and saturated ground had caused massive problems. One transmission tower outside of McAlester became so heavy in the storm that its anchors pulled from the ground.

``We had a domino effect and lost 14 structures,'' Whiteford said.

McAlester Mayor Dale Covington declared a dusk-til-dawn curfew after the power went out Thursday. Water service, knocked out when the city lost power, was restored early Friday.

``There's still some shortages south of town, but the water is still running,'' Covington said.

Officially, the deaths of 11 people, including three children, are being blamed on the storm. A dialysis patient who was unable to receive treatment because of low water pressure at McAlester Regional Health Center died, a city official said.

On Friday, a forest ranger helping to clear fallen trees and other debris from roads in Haskell County was killed. Casper W. ``Cap'' Hoag III, 40, was operating a bulldozer when a tree limb struck him and punctured an artery, said Jack Carson, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.

Hoag, of Quinton, had worked for the state Forestry Division since 1996, Carson said.

Mike Taylor, 39, said he and his wife, Lisa, 39, and his stepson hitchhiked into McAlester on Tuesday after the power in their house went out.

``We cook and everything on electric and we live in the country, so it's even worse out there,'' Taylor said. His wife suffers from asthma and sometimes relies on a machine to help her breath, said Taylor, who walks with the help of a cane.

Billie Cathey, executive director of the Red Cross chapter in southeastern Oklahoma, said many residents, including the elderly, leave home reluctantly.

``People don't leave their homes easily. They will be cold and in the dark before they do anything else,'' she said.

President Clinton declared an emergency in the state on Thursday and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Keating earlier in the week declared the state's 77 counties a disaster area.

Ashwood said 22,000 gallons of bottled water was being shipped from Atlanta to the McAlester National Guard Armory, which would be a distribution point.

Clinton's declaration allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster relief efforts in the region blasted by the storm, including the southeast quadrant of the state bounded by Interstate 35 on the west and Interstate 40 on the north.

Ashwood said FEMA had shipped 13 giant generators from Fort Worth, Texas, to provide power to water plants, hospitals and other essential services.

He said it was too early to have an estimate of the damages.