East Coast prepares for snowstorm

	Jeff Cook, AP
	Fresh snow contributed to an accident on Thursday in Davenport, Iowa.

Winter storm watches are posted along the East Coast from the Carolinas to New England on Friday as forecasters say a storm is brewing that could bring the worst snowfall in five years in some areas. A low-pressure system is forecast to form off the North Carolina coast Friday evening and track up the East Coast. Snow totals of a foot or more are possible in some areas, and high wind could create blizzard conditions. In New York City, the snow removal equipment was geared for action, along with about 200,000 pounds of salt and thousands of cleanup workers. It could be the largest snowfall in the city since the blizzard of Jan. 7-8, 1996, which dumped more than 20 inches of snow. 

Thursday marked the fourth day that thousands across the south-central United States spent without electricity, learning to make the best of a miserable situation. Since Christmas Eve, icy storms have snapped tree limbs and knocked out power to more than 600,000 homes and businesses in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. 

President Clinton declared federal disaster areas Thursday in Oklahoma and parts of his home state of Arkansas. About 210,000 electric customers in Arkansas and 166,000 in Oklahoma were without power Thursday night. 

Clinton made the Arkansas declaration after speaking with Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt, who was himself without water and electricity as he spent the holidays at his western Arkansas farm. 

Witt said he was drinking bottled water, using runoff water to flush a commode, and showering at nearby truck stops. 

''I tried to get Washington to send me a generator, but apparently I don't have enough pull,'' he joked. 

Arkansas electricity customers have been told that it could be Jan. 6 before all power is back on, while in Oklahoma some estimates reach as long as two weeks. 

''It's realistic,'' Scott McCloud, a spokesman for AEP-Southwestern Electric Power, said of the estimates. ''This is a devastating storm.'' 

James Thompson, a spokesman for Arkansas electrical company Entergy, said the damage was similar to that caused by a large tornado, ''only it was a much slower process.'' He said that trees around the state ''bent and bent and bent, then they finally broke.'' 

But tornadoes don't do damage on this scale. 

''I've never seen anything like this. I'd take a tornado any day,'' said Mayor Dennis Ramsey of Hope, Ark., Clinton's hometown. 

Authorities blame at least 41 deaths on the bad weather in the nation's midsection: 22 in Texas, 11 in Oklahoma, four in New Mexico, two in Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Minnesota. A Greyhound bus rolled over on an icy stretch of Interstate 80 in Nebraska, injuring 33 people. 

In Texas, National Guardsmen helped move trapped vehicles and rescued some of the 1,000 drivers stranded along Interstate 20 on an icy incline about 80 miles from Fort Worth. 

Trucks jackknifed and cars slid into ditches, forcing the closing of a nearly 20-mile stretch of highway. Some travelers were stranded for up to 12 hours. 

Thousands of electric line workers brought in from outside the region to help restore electricity competed with locals for hotel rooms. 

In Texarkana, motel manager Terri Roberts said the place had been full since Christmas. The motel's computers and phones were down, but the power was on. 

With no access to their computers, the motel stopped dealing with reservations, even for those who had booked in advance. It became first-come-first served. 

''We've even had people making their own beds ... because we couldn't find employees that could get in,'' Roberts said. ''But if we just handed them the sheets, they were glad to get a room.'' 

A separate storm moved through the upper Midwest on Thursday, dropping snow at an inch per hour in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota. Hundreds of flights out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were canceled. 

Although the midwestern storm has weakened, it is expected to gather strength off the East Coast on Friday and bring heavy snow Saturday to coastal sections of the Northeast. Large cities including Washington, New York and Boston were forecast to see as much as a foot of snow.