Washington, July 4 (IANS) More than four days after a savage summer storm brought the world’s most powerful nation to its knees, about 1.2 million customers in the American capital and ten states from Indiana to Delaware still have no electricity.
Even as the number of ‘powerless’ came down from about 1.8 million Monday night– and a peak of 4 million on Friday night and Saturday, just after the storms hit, officials said some residents may not get electricity back until the end of the week.
The total number of households and businesses without power Tuesday night included about 96,000 in metropolitan Washington, DC, some 326,000 in West Virginia, 291,000 in Ohio and roughly 223,000 in Virginia, according to CNN.
Amid rising frustration among the residents over such a long delay in restoration of power, Washington city mayor Vincent Gray has opened six sites to distribute boxed lunches to affected residents.
Some of the millions without power flocked to malls, libraries, pools and any other public place with electricity to seek relief from a massive heat wave sweeping large parts of America.
Extreme heat warnings were issued Tuesday for portion of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan, with the National Weather Service saying that those areas would be scorched with temperatures near or above triple digits.
Heat advisory warnings were in place for a handful of states, including parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.
The death toll in the storms has risen to 31. At least 17 people were killed from Ohio to New Jersey in Friday’s massive storm, while another three in North Carolina died in a second round of storms Sunday. Storms claimed 11 lives in Virginia.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
