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CHICAGO - Deaths from the bitter cold and poisonous fumes from makeshift fires mounted today in Illinois and Missouri as power outages now in their fourth day created hardships for hundreds of thousands, authorities said.
Ice-coated tree limbs broke off and brought down more power lines even as utility crews enlisted from 14 states helped restore electricity to tens of thousands of others.
At the peak of the storm that struck the Midwest late on Friday and Saturday, more than half a million customers of Ameren Corp. had lost power. More than 300,000 Illinois and Missouri customers of Ameren were still without power today, the utility said.
National Guard troops in both states checked on abandoned vehicles and on residents shivering in unheated homes as temperatures dipped into -7 Celsius to -11 Celsius at night.
Two men burning coal in a cooking wok died on Monday, apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Another man died when he tumbled down the stairs in his darkened home, and authorities found a man dead in his backyard from the cold.
At least eight people have died in the St. Louis area in the aftermath of the storm, the newspaper said.
Some have gone to warming shelters, and others slept in their workplaces.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay urged caution when using fireplaces, generators or space heaters to heat homes where furnaces do not work because of the power outage.
The snow and ice storm closed highways and rail lines, which were gradually reopening, authorities said.
Above-freezing temperatures were forecast for the region as early as Tuesday.
"Today it's going to get up to 1 Celsius, which should go a long ways to melting ice off of those trees," National Weather Service forecaster Patrick Slattery said.
"They'll have the rest of the week with no precipitation and temperatures at least above freezing," he said.
- REUTERS
