Governor Steve Beshear has ordered the total activation of the Kentucky National Guard. The move will add three thousand troops to the recovery effort across the state, making it the largest call-up of National Guard troops in Kentucky history.
In the Louisville area, roughly 122 thousand residents were without power as of Saturday afternoon. Mayor’s spokesperson Chris Poynter says warm temperatures this weekend are causing additional problems for power crews.
“They go and get a neighborhood on, the ice starts melting off the tree, the tree starts flipping back up and takes down more wire,” he says. “So they are starting to see that.”
Jefferson County Public Schools officials have not yet made a decision to cancel classes Monday, but Poynter says 13 schools are without power, and restoring electricty to the facilities is only the first step.
“Once you bring the school up there might be other issues,” he says. “There may be broken pipes, there may be issues of getting the boiler started. One of the issues also is, a lot of families are not living in their house so they can’t be picked up at their normal bus stop.”
E-On U.S. has over 25 hundred workers in the area and full power restoration isn’t expected until sometime next week.
The U.S. Postal Service may have to cut back more services in the face of mounting economic pressure. The service has been ordered to pay billions for retiree health care, and it’s asking Congress for some relief from those payments in order to maintain service. But spokesman David Walton says the postal service is also facing external business pressure.
“First class mail has been declining, mostly due to electronic diversion. In the area of shipping, we face tremendous competition from several world-class competitors. And then also mailers have been cutting back as well because of their own financial challenges and because of the rising costs of basic inputs, like paper,” says Walton.
Walton says the service has offered thousands of employees early retirement and frozen executive salaries. If Congress does not approve scaling back retiree health care benefits, Walton says the service may reduce mail delivery to five days a week temporarily.
After repairing damage from the two worst power outages in Kentucky history, E-On U.S. says it’s unlikely it will bury power lines to prevent future damage from falling trees.
Vice President of Energy Delivery Chris Hermann says the process of burying lines is expensive and complicated, given the number of other companies that use utility poles for infrastructure.
“To go into existing urban areas and try to take all of the utility lines, phone, cable, LG&E off of the polls, it’s just terribly, terribly expensive,” he says.
Herman says utility companies are burying lines in new developments.
A West Louisville family of three is dead following suspected carbon monoxide exposure. The family did not have power and was running a generator in their garage.
EMS Director Neal Richmond says carbon monoxide poisoning can come from even slight exposure to generators near windows or in sealed areas.
“Someone has a generator either out in the garage or in a mud room or something and they go out there to refuel it very briefly and the next thing they’re either very symptomatic, very sick, or in this case they happen to be dead,” says Richmond.
Metro Government is planning to distribute fliers through retailers and letter-carries alerting residents to the dangers of improper generator use.
Homeless shelters and other service agencies have been struggling with storm’s effects. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.
Officials at Louisville’s Coalition for the Homeless report shelters throughout the city are near or at capacity with people needing lodging during this week’s weather. And some agencies have also been doing their work without power. That includes Wayside Christian Mission, which lost power but now has electricity. Others, like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, are still coping without power.
Ed Wnorowski is the executive director at St. Vincent de Paul.
“Obviously, we’re running overtime, in particular for the maintenance staff,” Wnorowski says. ”We’re running five generators and that’s consuming gasoline, which is not budgeted. But so far our heads are above water.”
St. Vincent de Paul and other agencies say they have seen increased demand for services in their kitchens where they are feeding more people and more families.
“Where we’re seeing the spike in demand is folks coming into the kitchen, and this is specifically weather related not just economy related,” Wnorowski says.
Fifty six post offices are still without power throughout Kentucky. And three are still closed. That’s down from nearly a dozen offices closed earlier this week, and well over a hundred without power. But mail service is slowly returning in the Commonwealth. Still, postal service spokesman David Walton says some offices have fallen behind.
“There is mail that has backed up at some offices, just about a day or two, and we hope to have that delivered as soon as we can,” says Walton.
Walton says some streets have been declared too dangerous to enter, and so homes on those streets will have to wait until it’s safe for letter carriers to return. He says the postal service is working around the clock to return delivery to normal.
With public employees working overtime and relief efforts in full swing, the ice storm could cost Louisville Metro government millions of dollars.
But Mayor Jerry Abramson says money is not restricting the city’s recovery efforts.
“We gotta do what we gotta do to ensure that this community is back to normal as quickly as possible,” says Abramson. “We also have to do what we have to do to make sure people have places to spend the night and that we support the efforts for food and shelter.”
The city spent about $3 million on recovery efforts after last September’s windstorms, but got some financial help following a federal disaster declaration. A spokesperson for the mayor says federal assistance may soon be available for recovery from this week’s storm.
