Death toll from blizzard in U.S. reaches 23
At least 23 people have died because of the snowstorm, which continues in the U.S., according to the TV channel NBC. Earlier it was reported about 16 dead.
In Michigan, an 82-year-old woman was found near a nursing home in the town of Bath, north of Lansing, local police said. A snowplow driver clearing a parking lot found the woman curled up in the snow. They carried her inside and tried to prevent her death from hypothermia, but she died at a local hospital.
Authorities in Denver, Colorado, said two people have died from environmental exposure since Thursday. The final cause and manner of death will be determined by the Denver Medical Examiner’s Office.
The Nebraska State Patrol confirmed one weather-related death. Additional details have not yet been released. A spokesman for the agency said it has responded to more than 600 weather-related incidents.
There have also been weather-related deaths in Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
Three people were previously reported killed in crashes in Kansas, four in crashes in Ohio. Three more people were killed in Kentucky, one of them in a traffic accident. Kansas City, Missouri, police said one person was killed after a car drove off an icy road into a frozen body of water. In addition, three people were killed in New York State and one in Tennessee.
In the USA, during the last two days there were canceled more than 7.3 thousand flights, follows the Flightaware portal data. Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York was forced to completely stop flights on Friday because of snow brought by the wind. At Cleveland and Grand Rapids airports in Michigan more than 70 percent of flights were cancelled.
In all, more than 755,000 homes and businesses in the U.S. were left without power as the storm damaged power lines and temperatures dropped to record lows. Utilities in North Carolina, Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress, which together serve about 500,000 people, have asked customers to conserve electricity. In New England, the energy operator declared a level one state of emergency and called for a reduction in electricity consumption.