I am a resident in Southern Illinois and we have been slammed with 4 inches of sleet and 3 inches of snow. This is nothing compared to the mess that is fifty miles south. The entire Ohio Valley is covered in an inch of ice. They have no power. They have no gas to start the generators. People are starting to freeze. They started opening warming stations, but without power, people may not know what is going on. This is a major situation and I have not heard one word about FEMA.
Paducah, KY and the surrounding area is suffering the hardest in this crisis with 90% power outage, this is aproximately 100,000 people-maybe more. (tonight it is supposed to be nine degrees-a little chilly without power.) They have several warming station, however the roads are a sheet of ice. Apparently there are 500 National Guard, but this is not limited to the Paducah area. The Governors office is reporting that more than 500,000 people are out of power statewide. Reuters is covering it a littlelink. Murray State is out of power and the instructions are now just coming in on what they should do. They have been without power since last night-I believe. Paducah has a curfew of dusk. Some of the region is running out of water.
The bottom tip of Illinois is also having outages-where is our Gov? On his media blitz. I have heard zip about the Illinois National Guard while thousands are out of power.
Missouri is having difficulty too. The only TV station that I can pull up with any power or substantial coverage of this event is out of Missouri. This is a major event that might prove very deadly if these people do not receive help. I cannot pull up the Paducah website because of the outage. They are transmitting a broadcast on Television and on the radio but their site is down.
The KY emergency management is recommending that people go to friends and family or the warming stations. That's fine but what if they are out of power? Why don't they bus these people out? This is a mess. What about evacuating these people to a place with power? Maybe some Kossacks can generate a little interest in this story because they are stuck in a major disaster.
I appologize if this is a little choppy, I just finished pushing out five cars and shoveling my big-ass driveway. I am also getting pissed at what appears to be civic leaders passing the buck on this situation.