At least 20 dead as millions in US endure record cold without power

A winter storm that left millions without power in record-breaking cold weather has claimed more lives, including three people found dead after a tornado hit a town in North Carolina and four family members who perished in a Houston blaze while using a fireplace to stay warm.

The storm that overwhelmed power grids and immobilised the Southern Plains carried heavy snow and freezing rain into New England and the Deep South and left behind painfully low temperatures. Wind-chill warnings extended from Canada into Mexico.

In all, at least 20 deaths were reported. Other causes included car crashes and carbon monoxide poisoning. The weather also threatened to affect the nation’s Covid-19 vaccination effort.

President Joe Biden’s administration said delays in vaccine shipments and deliveries were likely.

North Carolina’s Brunswick County had little notice of the dangerous weather, and a tornado warning was not issued until the storm was already on the ground.

The National Weather Service was “very surprised how rapidly this storm intensified.. and at the time of night when most people are at home and in bed, it creates a very dangerous situation,” Emergency Services director Ed Conrow said.

In Chicago, 46 centimetres of new snow forced public schools to cancel in-person classes for Tuesday. Hours earlier, along the normally balmy Gulf of Mexico, cross-country skier Sam Fagg hit fresh powder on the beach in Galveston, Texas.

The worst US power outages were in Texas, affecting more than two million homes and businesses. More than 250,000 people also lost power across parts of Appalachia, and another 200,000 were without electricity following an ice storm in north-west Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outage reports. Four million people lost power in Mexico.

Texas officials requested 60 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and planned to prioritise hospitals and nursing homes. The state opened 35 shelters to more than 1,000 occupants, the agency said.

More than 500 people sought comfort at one shelter in Houston. Mayor Sylvester Turner said other warming centres had to be shut down because they lost power.

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet the extreme demand for heat and electricity.

Blackouts of more than an hour began around dawn on Tuesday for Oklahoma City and more than a dozen other communities, stopping electric-powered space heaters, furnaces and lights just as temperatures hovered around minus eight degrees.

Oklahoma Gas & Electric rescinded plans for further blackouts but urged users to set thermostats at 68 degrees, avoid using major electric appliances and turn off lights or appliances they are not using.

However, Entergy began rolling blackouts on Tuesday night in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Southeast Texas at the direction of its grid manager, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, “as a last resort and in order to prevent more extensive, prolonged power outages that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid,” according to a statement from the New Orleans-based utility.

Nebraska’s blackouts came amid some of the coldest weather on record: In Omaha, the temperature bottomed out at 23 degrees below zero overnight, the coldest in 25 years.

The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, said the blackouts were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole”.

The outages forced a Texas county to scramble to administer more than 8,000 doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine after a public health facility lost power early on Monday and its backup generator also failed, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

County officials distributed the doses at three hospitals, Rice University and the county jail because those places had large groups of people available where they would not have to drive and with appropriate medical personnel on hand.

Texas officials said more than 400,000 additional doses due now will not arrive until at least Wednesday because of the storm.

In North Carolina, the weather service’s office in Wilmington dispatched a team to confirm that a tornado did indeed touch down and do survey damage in Brunswick County, said Mark Willis, the office’s meteorologist in charge.

Three people died and 10 were injured when the apparent tornado tore through a golf course community and another rural area just before midnight on Monday, destroying dozens of homes.

Authorities in multiple states reported deaths in crashes on icy roads, including two people whose vehicle slid off a road and overturned in Kentucky on Sunday, state police said.

In Texas, three young children and their grandmother died in the Houston-area fire, which likely began while they were using a fireplace to keep warm during a power outage, a fire official said.

At least 13 children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Cook Children’s Medical Centre in Fort Worth, the hospital said in a social media post, which warned that families were “going to extreme measures to warm their homes” — with propane or diesel-burning engines and generators, gas ovens and stovetops.

One parent died of the toxic fumes, paediatrician Phillip Scott told Fort Worth television station KTVT.

Other Texas deaths included a woman and a girl who died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in Houston at a home without electricity from a car left running in an attached garage, and two men found along Houston-area roadways who likely died in subfreezing temperatures, law enforcement officials said.

In west Tennessee, a 10-year-old boy died after falling into an ice-covered pond on Sunday during a winter storm, fire officials said.