Clear weather allows officials to gain foothold, shows more work to do

Thursday, December 28th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

(AP)-With the clarity of a day without falling snow or ice, Oklahoma officials on Wednesday both got a foothold on electrical outages caused by a winter storm _ and discovered there was much more work to be done.

State officials estimated upwards of 170,000 homes and businesses without electric power. Oklahoma Gas & Electric estimated that about 84,000 of its customers were still without power by Wednesday evening.

The death toll from the storm rose to at least five when a 12-year-old boy out sledding with two other children slid down an embankment into the back tires of a tractor-trailer Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

Four people were killed Christmas Day in traffic accidents and a Texas woman when the van she was riding lost control on an icy stretch of U.S. 69 on Wednesday.

OG&E spokesman Tim Hartley said that for the first time in days, the company was able to evaluate its system without foul weather causing problems with its line crews or computer system.

``Yesterday it was a lot about travel and diagnosis and trying to get people to problems, which was difficult because of the roads,'' Hartley said. ``Today it's more about getting work done.''

He said more than 500 people were working to restore the company's power throughout the state and that the clearing weather would allow them to work more effectively.

``We had a lot of situations in the last two days where they were making great progress in turning power back on, but it was going off elsewhere just as fast,'' Hartley said. ``Now that the storm has largely passed through we expect that when we turn power back on it will stay on.''

Hartley said officials will stop work late Wednesday night and allow crews to go home and rest.

``At a certain point, it becomes unsafe and counterproductive, so we let them (crews) go home at night,'' he said.

Meanwhile, Gov. Frank Keating on Wednesday declared the entire state a disaster area, and people without heat headed to shelters that were being set up across Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma National Guard has provided generators statewide as well as about 300 cots and blankets for Red Cross shelters, spokeswoman Capt. Carrie Clear said.

She said armories in Okemah, Ardmore and Perry were opened to residents and that guard members supplied water in McAlester, where many residents remained without.

Nearly two dozen people who lost power to their homes took shelter overnight at the Outreach Center in Sallisaw, one of the few places in town with electricity.

The shelter offered warm beds, but if one more person had needed a place to sleep ``we would have had to put them on church pews,'' said manager Sandra Mason.

About 6,000 households in McAlester remained without electricity Wednesday, though power was restored to most residents Tuesday night after 20 hours without it.

About 20,000 people in the outlying county remained without power and stood to be that way for between three to seven days, said Billy Mellor, Director of Emergency Management for Pittsburg County.

A spokesman for Public Service Oklahoma said crews from Texas and across western Oklahoma were being called in to restore power, but that there was no estimate as to when that might happen.

Mellor said six shelters had been set up throughout the county, while several homes caught on fire because of downed power lines.

``The situation is improving because of getting the water,'' he said.

In Ada, about half the town's residents remained without drinking water or power where falling tree limbs continued to cause problems, Assistant Police Chief Rick Carson said Wednesday morning.

``Even though there's not much wind, the limbs are just giving up and going down through the power lines,'' he said.

He said crews were working on the water and power problems and that he expected water service to be restored before too long.

``We're coping with it,'' he said.

``Right now we're just trying to deal with situations as they come up.''

Life for many, however, regained a sense of normalcy Wednesday. State and private employees returned to work, while airports in Tulsa and Oklahoma City expected most flights to arrive and leave on time, though passengers from canceled flights during the previous days made for long lines.

Roads remained slick and dangerous with several inches of snow compressed into sheets of ice on some roads.

``Today should be better than yesterday for a couple of reasons. Traffic's been moving on the main roads, which beat down the snow, and we've been sanding and blading,'' Department of Transportation spokesman Dave Raybern said. ``It's not ideal. It's still hazardous but it's improving slowly as we've been able to get a hold of the really heavy areas.''

There were no major closures on state and federal highways and interstates in Oklahoma Wednesday morning, where all 465 of the state's sand and plow trucks worked to clear roads, Raybern said.

``We'll get the major traffic arteries first and then whatever we can get to as it goes,'' Raybern said.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that U.S. 69, a popular Tulsa-Dallas route, in southern Oklahoma remained slick, particularly about 10 miles north of Atoka and into Pittsburg County.

National Weather Service meteorologist Cheryl Sharp said things appeared to be ripe for calm in Oklahoma at least until Saturday when she said another blast of Arctic air could enter the state and bring some additional snow.

``There will be a little bit of freezing drizzle over a few places, but nothing major at all,'' she said.

Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management, said crews were looking forward to working in favorable conditions.

``In the past two days it's been 'go out there and make repairs and improve the driving conditions,' and then you have a blanket of ice on top of your hard work,'' Ooten said Wednesday. ``It's got to help some.''