Crews still restoring power to thousands of customers blacked out by last week's storm

BETHANY, Okla. - To the hum of nearby chain saws and whirr of neighborhood generators, Jerry Brantley tried to hack through a snarl of tree limbs left by last week&#39;s crippling ice storms. <br> <br> It was Brantley&#39;s fifth day without electricity Monday and his frustration with the slow cleanup was shared by homeowners in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. <br> <br> &#34;Taking cold showers gets old after a while,&#34; said Brantley, 38. <br> <br> More light snow was forecast for Tuesday morning in Texas and hard-hit Oklahoma, where some 61,000 customers still had no electricity, five days after the storm coated trees and power lines with ice. More than 60,000 customers in both Kansas and Missouri were without power. <br> <br> The storm was blamed for at least 27 deaths as it crashed through the southern Plains and stretched all the way to New England. In addition to snow and freezing rain, it blasted the region with wind that gusted as high as 71 mph in upstate New York. <br> <br> Three people died over the weekend -- two in Oklahoma and one in Vermont -- after inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from gasoline-powered generators or lamps. <br> <br> In its first official damage report Monday, Kansas&#39; adjutant general&#39;s office reported $17 million in damage in two counties alone. A total of 35 counties are requesting disaster assistance. <br> <br> About 57,250 Kansas homes were still without power at the latest official count Monday afternoon, the state said. Most should have power on by midweek, but some of the hardest-hit places may not get electric service until at least the end of the week. <br> <br> &#34;Some of these smaller municipalities are having a real rough time,&#34; said Kent Myers, spokesman for Westar Energy, the state&#39;s largest electric provider. &#34;It is kind of hard to get people back up when you have that kind of devastation throughout the state.&#34; <br> <br> The largest home and auto insurance provider in Missouri and Kansas, State Farm, expects about 4,600 Missouri policyholders and 5,000 in Kansas to file storm-related claims. Other firms expect thousands more. <br> <br> Missouri Gov. Bob Holden asked President Bush on Monday for a disaster declaration for 33 northwestern counties. The state&#39;s cleanup cost has been estimated at more than $22 million and about 65,000 Missouri utility customers were still without power late Monday. <br> <br> At the height of the outage, 412,000 Missouri customers were without electricity, 225,000 homes and businesses were blacked out in Oklahoma and some 435,000 Kansas residents had no power. <br> <br> The hidden cost of coping with the blackouts was mounting quickly. <br> <br> &#34;I&#39;ve got a family of five to feed, and if you take five people out to eat each day, you&#39;re looking at around $60,&#34; said Richard Huddleston, 45, in Bethany. <br> <br>

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