Residents in southeast Oklahoma survive on gas heat, camp stoves 12/27/2000 By The Associated Press

Judith Caton cooked on a propane camp stove and kept tabs on the outside world Wednesday with a battery-powered radio as an ice-induced power outage shrouded portions of Oklahoma for a second day. “We’re coping very well, and we’re doing a lot of reading,” said Caton, who lives just south of Ada with her parents. “I’m playing Pokemon monopoly with my 7-year-old son.”

Caton and thousands of other eastern Oklahoma residents remained without power after a winter storm caked the area with ice, splitting tree trunks and limbs and bringing power lines and poles crashing to the ground.

Travelers were delayed or stranded. Area residents trekked to shelters and took up available hotel and motel rooms that had power. Flights were delayed. Despite the conditions, area newspapers continued to operate.

The lights went out early Tuesday at Caton’s, forcing the family to break out the candles, the radio and the propane camp stove, she said.

Natural gas provided hot water and heat, but the kitchen stove was powered with electricity.

“We have the means to rough it, so we’re cooking off a two-burner Coleman stove,” Caton said.

Opal Harbeston walked 3 miles Tuesday afternoon from her country home to a shelter at the Sallisaw Outreach Center.

Power to the 62-year-old’s trailer went out around 9 a.m. Tuesday. The ice prevented her daughter from coming to rescue her, so around 4 p.m. Harbeston set out from her cold home on roads coated in ice.

“There were limbs falling down around me,” said Harbeston, who suffers from arthritis but described herself as a tough “country girl” who kept going.

“Normally I don’t walk anywhere,” she said Wednesday morning as the shelter prepared to serve breakfast. “I knew where I could find a nice warm place to stay. It’s just like one big happy family.”

Vanessa Wells, who lives at Fitzhugh southwest of Ada, said power stayed on at her house, despite an electric grid teetering under the weight of 1.5 inches of ice.

She could hear the sound of limbs cracking in the country air.

“We almost look like we’ve been bombed down here,” Wells said. “All the trees are split right down the middle.”

Sheri Scoggin, the front desk clerk at the Holiday Inn in Ada, said all the motel’s 115 rooms were taken Tuesday, some with residents seeking shelter from the cold at home.

At Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City, Jim Williams and his wife, Kimberly, were 80 people from the TWA counter Wednesday.

An Oklahoma native now living in Charlotte, N.C., Williams said the couple had been trying to get home since Christmas night after a visit with family in the area.

A Tuesday flight was canceled after their Christmas flight was called off. Williams said he had been told their Wednesday morning flight to St. Louis was on. But he got more bad news when he arrived at the airport: another cancellation.

“So we’re back in this line with about 300 other people trying to rebook again,” Williams said. “I’d take Alaska Airlines at this point just to get us somewhere but here.”

Despite power outages and icy roads, the presses rolled Tuesday at daily newspapers across southeast Oklahoma. Also rolling — and slipping and sliding — were the newspapers’ carriers as they made their deliveries.

“We were struggling from minute to minute because of the power situation,” said Brenda Tollett, managing editor of the Ada Evening News.

The News had power Wednesday, but Tollett said three of the four people in the newsroom had no electricity at home.

The presses at the Duncan Banner were a little late in rolling because of power and computer problems, but editor Glen Seeber said the paper was published as usual.

Power outages forced the McAlester News-Capital & Democrat to publish at the Durant Democrat. And when the power came back on, the Poteau News & Sun published at McAlester. Printing at McAlester, however, is routine for the Poteau paper which is having its press overhauled.

“Treacherous doesn’t even begin to describe travel conditions,” said Carlton Lane, managing editor of the News-Capital. “It was touch and go to get the paper out, but we did it and that’s the important thing.”

Getting newspapers delivered was a problem because of icy roads and downed trees and power lines. However, Sherry McCormick of the Ada Evening News’ Circulation Department, said she had seen worse road conditions. And, “we have some pretty good carriers here,” she said.

http://www.oklahoman.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=611819&pic=none&TP=getarticle

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 27, 2000