By ABC11 & The Associated Press

Five days after the big ice storm, thousands of people are still in the dark. Duke Power has actually upped the number of outages in Durham. Sunday night they reported only 31,000 outages remained, but as of Monday morning, they discovered a calculation error and the number of outages in Durham actually stands at 59,000. That's at least 50% of Durham without power.

In Chapel Hill, 21,000 homes and businesses are still without power.

In Wake County, new numbers from CP&L reports more than 32,000 homes and businesses are without power. That's down 20,000 from last night. They tell us they are working to restore power to the greater Raleigh area by midnight tonight.

A spokesman for North Carolina's electric co-ops says 99 percent of their customers have been restored. Utility says marathon delayed repairs from storm Carolina Power and Light is criticizing officials of the Raleigh Marathon for running the event on a route that delayed theie efforts to restore power.

CP&L spokesman Keith Poston says utility crews had trouble reaching key spots, including a downtown command center near the South Wilmington Street starting line.

Crews also were delayed in getting to a staging area for trucks at the State Fairgrounds. Poston says the race should have been called off while efforts to recover from last week's major ice storm continued.

Race organizers said they heard of no complaints, and accommodated CP&L trucks at every turn.

In 2000, the race was delayed at the last minute because of a predicted snowstorm that never materialized. When it was run a week later, churches complained it interfered with services. Last year, Raleigh police sent about 100 of the fastest runners in the wrong direction.

Last Updated: Dec 9, 2002

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2002