Published: February 04, 2009 09:30 am      

Gov. hopes feds will pick up all ice storm costs

By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

Gov. Steve Beshear has asked President Barack Obama for a declaration of a major disaster in Kentucky in the wake of an ice storm more than a week old. The storm has affected 95 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and ground activity in many of them to a frozen halt.

The president has already declared Kentucky a disaster area. With that declaration the federal government will reimburse 75 percent of local and state expenditures on a range of items including overtime for workers, debris removal equipment and the local purchase of generators.

A “major disaster” declaration would allow the federal government to pick up 100 percent of the costs for expenses incurred during the first seven days of the storm. After that the federal government would provide 75 percent of the expenses and the state pick up the rest.

The governor also asked that the National Guard be put on federal status. In that case the Guard would still be under control of the governor, but expenses incurred, including payroll, would be picked up by the federal government.

Meanwhile in the legislature, Rep. Mike Cherry, a Democrat from Princeton, says he will file a bill that would waive up to 10 missed school days for students in districts affected by the current storm and the appearance of Hurricane Ike in September.

State law requires 177 six-hour days of class in each academic year, and districts which miss less then 20 days must make them up or add time to the school days.

At the height of the ice storm and its after-effects more than 700,000 Kentuckians were without electrical power.

By late Tuesday the number of Kentuckians without electricity was down to about 255,000.

Monday, the entire body of the Kentucky National Guard, moved into storm-ridden areas.

Some 3,000 troops joined the first 1,600 activated when the storm hit last week, with troops from Barbourville’s 149th infantry dispatched to Muhlenberg County’s Wendell H. Ford training Center just off the Western Kentucky Parkway at Greenville.

From there the troops — which included London, Harlan and Ravenna units — are assigned details that include clearing routes for emergency response vehicles and helping utilities gain access to damaged power transmission lines.

Wellness checks are a top priority for the Kentucky guard troops as members have on numerous occasions found local people in dire circumstances and have rendered aid, such as providing food and water, and in many cases evacuating them to shelters.

The guard troops have delivered some 320,000 meals to points of distribution and another 210,000 are on the way. The citizen-soldiers have delivered 650,000 bottles of water with an additional 300,000 on the way to distribution points.

“To our knowledge, no one who is hungry or thirsty has gone without food or water. If there are basic needs out there that are left un-met, we need to know of them so we can send in our troops,” said Gov. Beshear on his third visit into the stricken area Tuesday.

“We’re making real progress in helping communities get back on their feet,” he said. He had visited Murray, Mayfield, Bardwell and Paducah.

As of late Tuesday 25 deaths were confirmed as storm-related.

That’s an additional death since Monday. Causes of the death have been noted as hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, fires started by the use of auxiliary heat, as well as ambulance delays because of road conditions. Several deaths were caused by heart attacks that resulted from strenuous activities related to the storm such as shoveling snow.

A total of 150 shelters are open with an estimated 3,696, residents. That number dropped by 4,000 from a high of 7,844 as power has been restored. All of the shelters now have heat.

The state has received 164 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). It is the largest distribution of generators in Kentucky’s history. The generators went to shelters, nursing homes, water plants and government facilities. They are installed cooperatively by the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA and Kentucky-based contractors.