National Guard aids Ky. ice storm victims

February 2, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

CANEYVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Thousands of National Guard troops swinging chain saws cut their way into remote communities Sunday to reach residents stranded by a deadly ice storm, freeing some to get out of their driveways for the first time in nearly a week.

The soldiers went door-to-door handing out chili and beef stew rations to people cooped up in their powerless homes as authorities ratcheted up the relief effort for what Gov. Steve Beshear called the biggest natural disaster ever to hit the state.

“It’s going to be a long haul for us,” Gov. Steve Beshear said Sunday as he toured hard-hit areas in and around Elizabethtown. “We’ve thrown everything we have at it. We’re going to continue to do that until everyone is back in their homes and back on their feet.”

The sight of humvees rolling up one street in rural Grayson County, about 90 miles southwest of Louisville, sent children bouncing off the walls inside the generator-powered house where Bryan Bowling and 18 other people have been hunkering down by a fireplace.

“The kids were looking out the windows and yelling, ‘Yay! We’re saved!’” said Bowling, 30, who has a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old.

“It’s just good to know that people care.”

Kentucky was hit hardest by the ice storm that paralyzed wide areas from the Ozarks through Appalachia early last week. Officials blamed or suspected the storm in at least 42 deaths nationwide, most from hypothermia, traffic accidents or carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly installed generators or charcoal grills used indoors.

At its height, the storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Southern Plains to the East Coast, more than 700,000 of them in Kentucky, a state record. By Sunday, the figure had dropped to nearly half that across Kentucky, with scattered outages in other states.

The 4,600 soldiers Beshear ordered on duty, including his entire Army National Guard, swept through the state distributing food and water, removing fallen trees, providing security and checking houses in hard-to-reach areas. They brought food to Henry Mudd, among others, who said he has had nine family members staying in his powerless apartment, usually home to just three.

“It ain’t been easy,” said Mudd, a saw mill operator.

“The biggest thing we need is electricity,” Mudd said Sunday, one day after he finally cut through the fallen trees and branches that blocked his road and made it to the store, only to discover there wasn’t a battery to be found. “But we’re managing with wood heat. We’re staying warm.”

The troops, utility workers and good-natured civilians took advantage of temperatures near 50 across much of the region to make headway on repairs.