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A severe ice storm that struck the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada last week has left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power.

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KWAME HOLMAN: Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses still are without power after the five-day ice storm that hit the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada last week. The ice and snow blanketed Northern New York State, parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and the entire Eastern third of Canada.

SPOKESMAN: We have a major power outage. Most people don't have any means of heat, supplies, water.

KWAME HOLMAN: As many as twenty people died as a result of the weather, including two who were poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes from generators used for heating. That toll is in addition to the 10 deaths reported in southern states after massive flooding there caused by rain from this same storm system. Last night temperatures in the Northeast dipped below zero, hardening up to two inches of ice that covered virtually everything. On Saturday, President Clinton declared a state of emergency in a five-county area in Northern New York. National Guard troops went door to door delivering food, water, and fuel. And electric company crews are working 18-hour shifts.

SPOKESMAN: We're pretty tired, you know, so you've got to just set a good pace, be constant, you know. Ain't gonna do it in a day. A lot of damage.

KWAME HOLMAN: New York Governor George Pataki warned the effects of the crisis will be lasting.

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, New York: It's going to be difficult, not just for a day or two or a week. It's going to be difficult for a period of weeks for the entire state, the entire country, putting our resources under it.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Maine, Governor Angus King, whose own home is without power, toured some of the shelters in his hard-hit state.

GOV. ANGUS KING, Maine: It's just great to see the neighbors reaching out to each other. That's what it's all about, and that's how we're going to get through this thing.

KWAME HOLMAN: Conditions are even worse north of the border in Canada, where the ice storm was the worst in recorded history. A week-long power outage has affected 3 million Canadians. More than 11,000 Canadian troops are working with utility crews and emergency workers to clear roads and restore power. Nearly a million people can expect to be without power for another week. Schools and most businesses in Montreal are closed today. And more potential bad news: Forecasters say another significant snowstorm in Central New York and Southern New England is a strong possibility toward the end of the week.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And to tell us more, we turn to Gov. Angus King of Maine and to Louis Uccellini, director of the Office of Meteorology at the National Weather Service. Governor King, bring us up to date. What's the situation in Maine as of this evening?

GOV. ANGUS KING, Maine: Well, we're finally starting to make some real progress. The problem last week was that every time we'd fix a line it would go down again because the ice storm continued; it just wouldn't quit. Right now tonight I think we've got between three and three hundred and fifty thousand people still without power. But that's half of what it was on Saturday. We've had a couple of sunny days. That's the good news. If we catch a break from the weather the next few days, I think we're going to be out of the woods. But right now tonight I'm in a shelter here in Augusta. We've still got, as I say, about 350,000 people without electricity, and in most cases, that means without heat.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Governor, how are people coping, beginning with you? How have you coped, since your home hasn't had electricity?

GOV. ANGUS KING: Well, the good part of this thing, if there's any good to come out of this, they say people are at their best in bad circumstances, and the good news is that people in Maine are being fantastic reaching out to one another. My house lost power starting Friday morning. We just got it back this morning at about 5 in the morning. We've been bunking in with some neighbors, who had electricity. We've had eleven people, grandparents, five kids, and the trooper on the living room sofa. So, you know, that's what people are doing. It's Yankee ingenuity, and we're getting through it. But I've got to tell you that this is--we're now going into the fifth or sixth day where people are either with neighbors or in shelters. And the novelty is wearing off, and people's patience is wearing thin. But the good humor has been terrific. We had a crew of linemen from out of state go to dinner last night in Portland. They got a standing ovation from the people in the restaurant. So there's a lot of good things happening as well.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Besides that crew, what's being done to restore power to people quickly?

GOV. ANGUS KING: Well, we've got an army up here. Both of our major utilities have people from as far away as Baltimore. I'm sure those guys from Baltimore are wondering what they've gotten in to tonight, but we've got people from Pennsylvania, Baltimore, New Jersey, Massachusetts. We've got roughly five times the normal crews of people with tree-trimming operations, bucket trucks, diggers. And the problem that we're now having is that we've done most of the--the utilities have done the big stuff, the major lines. And now it's sort of hand-to-hand combat, street by street, putting people back on line. I was in a place here in Augusta. It looked like a war zone, with the trees down, the wires down, and people were--there were three and four breaks in a mile. And that's where the time takes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Uccellini, what caused this ice storm?

LOUIS UCCELLINI, National Weather Service: Well, this is an ice storm brought on by almost very unusual warm weather that was able to get up and over a very shallow layer of cold air as far North as Southeast Canada. When you have those conditions where the cold air is only several hundred feet deep, or a thousand feet deep, and you bring air from the tropics, literally from the tropics, up and over that, you bring the potential for very heavy rains that fall into this cold layer and freeze almost instantly upon hitting the wires and roads and trees.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There seem to be a lot of extremes right now of weather in the United States. It's been raining like crazy here in California, and there are ice storms in Oregon, as Kwame reported, and there's flooding in the Southeast. Does anything connect all of this together?

LOUIS UCCELLINI: Well, the type of weather patterns we're experiencing in the Southeast U.S.., up along the East coast of the U.S., and along the West Coast, itself, is certainly consistent with the El Nino pattern that was forecast by the climate predictions center of the National Weather Service months ago.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And remind us about El Nino.

LOUIS UCCELLINI: Well, El Nino represents the warm pool, which develops in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and shifts eastward in such a way that it can fuel the air streams which create the weather for the United States. When this pattern gets locked in as long as it has, the weather systems can be significantly--produce a significant amount of rainfall in the Southeast, for example, can produce very heavy storms along the West Coast of the United States, and under certain circumstances can produce significant ice and snowstorms along the East Coast, up into the New England states, as we saw last weekend.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Can you just explain that more specifically. How can warm currents in the Pacific cause ice in the Northeast?

LOUIS UCCELLINI: Well, the warm ocean in the Pacific actually influences the air currents over the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, it influences the jet streams. It amplifies them, creates instabilities within the jet streams. And these flow patterns then translate over the United States in such a way to create severe storms over the Southeast and up along the East Coast. We also can get series of storms developing that are fueled by the warm waters in the Pacific that impact directly along the West Coast. And we, in fact, are starting to see some of these storms line up tonight.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Governor King, what are you telling people who have no power to do? Are you telling them to go to shelters?

GOV. ANGUS KING: Well, the basic message that I've been giving for the last four days is that this has to be a neighbor-to-neighbor operation. We've got the shelters. As I think I mentioned, we have 135 of them statewide. But the issue has to be to check on your neighbors, particularly people who are disabled, who are elderly, to make sure they're okay, to make sure they're taken care of, and bring them to your house, or get them to a shelter. That's the message because it's getting cold. The good news is the last couple of days we've had sunshine, and that's helped. The bad news is the temperature has dropped, and it can be dangerous when it's down in the single digits, which it is--it's going to be tonight--if people are without--without heat. That's really the issue, and that's the message that we've been giving to people all weekend. So far, we've been lucky. I think it's a miracle that we've had more than 1/2 million people without heat in a Maine winter, and we've had two deaths from asphyxiation from people running a generator in their basement. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood that that pattern continues.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But that is the danger, right, that if you use some kind of heaters inside, you could have carbon monoxide poisoning?

GOV. ANGUS KING: Yes. And there's been a tremendous outpouring of information. A lot of our radio and TV stations have essentially gone on 24-hour information, people calling in, helping each other, people--I was on a help line the other day--people calling in, saying, can I bring my gas grill inside--absolutely not--that kind of thing. If you're going to use a kerosene heater, be sure it's vented. People are learning where the cutoff is for their water in their basement, so when they do leave their house, they turn off the main valve and save some of the pipes. So all of those kinds of things are happening, and I've got to emphasize that what has really been positive about this is the way people have reached out to each other. I was at a shelter yesterday. Kids were bringing in blankets for the elderly. And it's just been a great experience. Along with what the meteorologist said, we have an event in New England that's never occurred in my experience. It was warmer at the top of Mount Washington on Saturday than at the bottom. And that's never happened. I mean, Mount Washington for New Englanders is the definition of cold. And for it to be warmer at the top than at the bottom you know strange things are happening.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Uccellini, back to you, just very briefly, you said that more is expected. Tell us about that.

LOUIS UCCELLINI: Well, we have a weather pattern developing such that even tonight there might be some light precipitation across the New England area that could produce some light freezing rain or some snow. It wouldn't be as heavy as last week's, but what we're really worried about for the New England area is what could be happening by the end of this week. The National Weather Service's Hydro Dynamic Prediction Center is predicting the development of a major coastal storm by Wednesday and Thursday that could be moving up into the New England area. So they certainly have to be concerned with the weather patterns for this weekend. And in the West we also have a series of storms that are impinging upon the West Coast from California up towards Oregon and Washington State that could produce very heavy rains in Northern California, and there's a potential for some more snow in Oregon and Southern Washington State tonight, into tomorrow morning. So both coasts are under the gun with this weather pattern, and even in the Southeast, as that East Coast storm develops. We could be seeing more heavy rains in the Southeast.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Governor King and Louis Uccellini, thank you very much for being with us.

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