National Guard works to help N.C. residents cope with cold

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By EMERY P. DALESIO : Associated Press Writer Dec 9, 2002 : 12:33 am ET

DURHAM, N.C. -- On a sunny afternoon before another cold night without heat, Sharon Fogel ambled down her driveway to a camouflage Humvee stuffed with four uniformed soldiers.

The National Guard was on Lassiter Street.

"I guess we're really in an emergency," Fogel said Sunday.

Four days after an ice storm began blanketing the state and shutting down the electricity grid, Fogel and her neighbors face the prospect of several more days without heat, lights or appliances.

About 565,000 customers in the Carolinas still lacked power late Sunday.

Duke Power, which supplies electricity for most of the state between Durham and the Tennessee border, said it will take it until midnight Wednesday before it can restore power to most of its 436,000 customers still without electricity.

Carolina Power & Light, which serves most of the state east of Durham, was trying to return power to about 116,000 customers. The state's electric cooperatives reported about 13,000 without power Sunday.

Gov. Mike Easley called out National Guard volunteers to protect state residents from exposure to the cold and accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

Troops on Lassiter Street and other neighborhoods in 21 counties were going door-to-door Sunday to tell residents how to safely heat their homes after two people trying to keep warm died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They reminded residents that emergency shelters were open and offered to help in whatever way they could.

While six members of a guard aviation unit based in Morrisville fanned out to walk Durham's streets, four others sought to fulfill two requests for help from the day before.

A woman who ran the Unlimited Love Day Care Center out of her home asked for firewood. Her neighbor had spent the previous night with two adult family members in their car, which was heated by the running engine. The car ran out of gas, and Robert Nolan asked the citizen-soldiers if they could bring him more since the nearby gas stations were unable to pump fuel for lack of power.

The troops came back Sunday with the wood and gas. The daycare center's operator wasn't home and Nolan managed to buy gas on his own after power was restored to his neighborhood Saturday night.

Gov. Mike Easley on Sunday joined National Guard soldiers knocking on doors in Wendell, a town east of Raleigh. He said soldiers had contacted more than 10,000 homes. Earlier, he said he plans to ask President Bush to declare North Carolina a federal disaster area.

"The guard has found such things as charcoal being used (indoors) and has tried to stop that, and has found generators in homes," Easley said.

Back on Lassiter Street, Sgt. Ted Goodnight rapped on the front door of a home in the middle-class neighborhood of bungalows built about a decade ago. He found Fred Boadu, an immigrant from Ghana, burning a backyard gas grill in his living room to generate heat.

His son, Gerald, stepped out through the open front door to say, "I need some fresh air."

Goodnight strongly urged Boadu not to burn the grill indoors, since it was made with the intention that the gasses created by its use would be carried away by the breeze. Boadu said he didn't realize the danger, but that he was pressed to use the grill to keep his children warm.

Poor ventilation of high-carbon fuels designed for outdoor burning like charcoal can result in an indoor buildup of carbon monoxide, an extremely poisonous gas. When it's inhaled, it binds to hemoglobin, which normally carries oxygen throughout the body, and starves a person of oxygen.

That's apparently what happened to two fatal poisoning cases on Saturday.

Epifanio Arody Navarro, 32, of Durham was dead in his bed, police said. The nine people living in the house had apparently brought a charcoal grill inside.

In Shelby, a man died and his wife was hospitalized after they ran a generator on an enclosed sun porch, police said.

Thirty deaths, mostly traffic-related, have been blamed on the storm and its aftermath.

The latest was Sunday morning, when an out-of-state utility worker who was working to help restore power was killed in a truck crash near Gastonia.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 2002


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