OVER 500,000 WITHOUT POWER IN ST. LOUIS

By JEFF DOUGLAS, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 21, 5:44 PM ET

ST. LOUIS - National Guard troops stepped up their search for people in hot homes without power to run air conditioning Friday as heavy rains and tree-toppling winds added to the misery of the worst power outage in the city's history.

"We have 55 percent of the residents without power. Our biggest fear is that the number will go up," said Jeff Rainford, spokesman for Mayor Francis Slay.

A heat wave that has baked much of the nation this week has been blamed for at least 28 deaths.

The death toll in Oklahoma alone rose to seven. The state medical examiner's office said the heat caused the deaths of four elderly people on Thursday, including one in Oklahoma City, where the high that day was 107.

Oklahoma City was so hot that a portion of Interstate 44 buckled, forcing the temporary closure of two lanes.

In St. Louis, the weather has flip-flopped between sweltering heat and violent storms. As many as 500,000 Ameren Corp. customers in the area lost power Wednesday, making Thursday's heat that much more unbearable.

Progress in restoring power had been made, but Ameren said the number of customers without power rose even higher Friday, to 570,000, as a new wave of storms passed through.

In northwest St. Louis County, winds from the latest storm tore the roof off an office building, causing concerns about a natural gas leak and leaving about 100 workers to fend for themselves in the rain.

Jeff Winkler, an analytical chemist at Severn Trent Labs, was just pulling into the parking lot when the roof came off.

"I saw the roof flying, and I was thinking, 'Please, don't hit my car,'" said Winkler, 26. "I thought I saw the worst of it earlier this week — but this was worse."

The power company had said Wednesday's outage was the worst in its 100-plus year history, and that it could take four days to restore power. On Friday it said the work could take even longer.

More than 500 people spent Thursday night in two Red Cross shelters, and a third shelter was scheduled to open Friday afternoon to take in people who could not stay in their hot homes, Rainford said. Virtually every hotel room in the region was booked for the weekend, mostly by residents taking refuge from homes without power.

High temperatures in St. Louis had dropped to the mid-80s Friday, but National Guard troops, police, firefighters and volunteers were knocking on doors that morning to check on elderly residents and offer bottled water. On Thursday authorities said a 93-year-old St. Louis woman had been found dead in a home without power to run the air conditioning.

More than 50 cooling centers were set up in the area, but Agnes Reese, who spent Friday in one of the shelters, said the lack of air conditioning was just part of the problem.

"There are a lot of people who are hungry because all of their food has spoiled," said Reese, 48.

The weather in Missouri and Oklahoma was expected to be relatively cool over the weekend, a relief after days in which several people died in sweltering conditions.

The death of a 93-year-old man in De Soto, Mo., appeared to be heat-related, Jefferson County Sheriff's Capt. Ralph Brown said. The man and his 82-year-old wife had refused to leave their home despite Thursday's heat and the fact the power was out.

In southwest Missouri, a 76-year-old woman who went looking for her dog apparently succumbed to 103-degree heat and was found dead on a porch about a mile from her Ozark home, police said Friday.

Deaths in Oklahoma included a 79-year-old man who collapsed and died from the heat in the eastern part of the state while trying to contain a small fire he had started to burn some weeds, said Kevin Rowland, chief investigator for the state medical examiner's office.

Heat-related deaths also have been reported this week in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Kansas.

In New York, tens of thousands of people were still without power Friday, the fifth day of a mysterious electrical problem during the hottest week of the year.

Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said the power company was making every effort to get the situation fixed but couldn't estimate when that might happen. He said the company didn't know why things went wrong.