US storms leave 29 dead, hundreds of thousands without power (Roundup)

Jan 15, 2007, 17:50 GMT

Washington - Hundreds of thousands of people in the US Midwest were without electricity Monday after winter snow and ice storms killed at least 29 people in six states over the weekend.

Hardest hit were Missouri and Oklahoma, where trees and electric lines broke under the heavy weight of ice accumulating since Friday. Streets were slick and dangerous, media reports said.

But even in California, which was touched by freezing temperatures, damages to the agricultural industry were mounting.

Losses to California's 1.3-billion-dollar-a-year citrus industry were estimated at half a billion dollars, or about 38 per cent of the year's income, the Los Angeles Times reported. The last major freeze damage to crops was in 1998, with 700 million dollars of crops lost.

'We have suffered significant damage,' Joel Nelsen, president of Citrus Mutual, a growers' trade group, was quoted as saying.

Most of the deaths were from traffic accidents, Cable News Network reported. On Monday morning, the storm front moved into the Northeast, sending one man hurtling to his death over a bridge while trying to avoid another car sliding into his in New York state.

The storms began Friday with an Arctic air mass that pushed across the center of the country from Canada down to Texas. In Dallas, 400 flights out of the international airport were cancelled Sunday due to the icy tarmac.

More than 300 000 homes in Missouri were without power on Monday. Even California was touched by freezing temperatures, where citrus and avocado crops were ruined.