Millions endure record cold without power; at least 15 dead

OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. (AP) — A winter storm that left millions without power in record-breaking cold weather claimed more lives Tuesday, including three people found dead after a tornado hit a seaside town in North Carolina and four family members who perished in a Houston-area house fire while using a fireplace to stay warm.

The storm that overwhelmed power grids and immobilized the Southern Plains carried heavy snow and freezing rain into New England and the Deep South and left behind painfully low temperatures. Wind-chill warnings extended from Canada into Mexico.

In all, at least 20 deaths were reported. Other causes included car crashes and carbon monoxide poisoning. The weather also threatened to affect the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination effort. President Joe Biden’s administration said delays in vaccine shipments and deliveries were likely.

North Carolina’s Brunswick County had little notice of the dangerous weather, and a tornado warning was not issued until the storm was already on the ground.

The National Weather Service was “very surprised how rapidly this storm intensified ... and at the time of night when most people are at home and in bed, it creates a very dangerous situation,” Emergency Services Director Ed Conrow said.

In Chicago, a foot and a half (46 centimeters) of new snow forced public schools to cancel in-person classes for Tuesday. Hours earlier, along the normally balmy Gulf of Mexico, cross-country skiier Sam Fagg hit fresh powder on the beach in Galveston, Texas.

The worst U.S. power outages were in Texas, affecting more than 2 million homes and businesses. More than 250,000 people also lost power across parts of Appalachia, and another 200,000 were without electricity following an ice storm in northwest Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outage reports. Four million people lost power in Mexico.

Texas officials requested 60 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and planned to prioritize hospitals and nursing homes. The state opened 35 shelters to more than 1,000 occupants, the agency said.

More than 500 people sought comfort at one Houston shelter. Mayor Sylvester Turner said other warming centers were closed because they lost power.

After losing power Monday, Natalie Harrell said she, her boyfriend and four kids sheltered at a Gallery Furniture store in Houston. The warming center at the store provided people with food, water and power to charge essential electronics.

“It’s worse than a hurricane,” Harrell said. “I think we are going to be more days without light, that is what it seems like.”

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet extreme demand for heat and electricity.

Blackouts lasting more than an hour began around dawn Tuesday for Oklahoma City and more than a dozen other communities, stopping electric-powered space heaters, furnaces and lights just as temperatures hovered around minus 8 degrees (minus 22 degrees Celsius).

Oklahoma Gas & Electric rescinded plans for more blackouts but urged users to set thermostats at 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), avoid using major electric appliances and turn off lights or appliances not in use.

However, Entergy began rolling blackouts Tuesday night in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Southeast Texas at the direction of its grid manager, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, “as a last resort and in order to prevent more extensive, prolonged power outages that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid,” according to a statement from the New Orleans-based utility.

“Due to extremely cold temperatures over the last several days, the demand for electricity has reached an all-time high,” the Entergy statement said. “Additionally, these weather conditions have forced off generation resources across the system. The implementation of this load shed across the Entergy region will help ensure an adequate reserve margin, which helps ensure Entergy is better positioned to manage through additional extreme weather this week.”

Entergy has almost 3 million electric power customers in the four states.

Nebraska’s blackouts came amid some of the coldest weather on record: In Omaha, the temperature bottomed out at 23 degrees below zero overnight (minus 30 degrees Celsius), the coldest in 25 years.

The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, said the blackouts were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”

The outages forced a Texas county to scramble to administer more than 8,000 doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine after a public health facility lost power early Monday and its backup generator also failed, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

County officials distributed the doses that could have spoiled at three hospitals, Rice University and the county jail because there were large groups of people available who would not have to drive and appropriate medical personnel present.

“It feels amazing. I’m very grateful,” said Harry Golen, a JohnJohnAllanAllanFunk John Allan Funk college sophomore who waited for nearly four hours with his friends, much of it in the cold, and was among the last people to get the shots, which otherwise would not have reached students until March or April.

Texas officials said more than 400,000 doses due now will not arrive until at least Wednesday because of the storm.

The tornado that hit North Carolina’s Brunswick County was an EF3 with winds estimated at 160 mph (257 kph), the weather service said on Twitter.

Three people died and 10 were injured when the tornado tore through a golf course community and another rural area just before midnight Monday, destroying dozens of homes.

Sharon Benson, 63, said her roof was damaged and her garage door blown off. Windows were shattered and nearby trees were uprooted.

“The sky lit up and there was a lot of pop-pop-popping” and thunder, she said.

Authorities in multiple states reported deaths in crashes on icy roads , including two people whose vehicle slid off a road and overturned in a waterway in Kentucky on Sunday, state police said. A Mississippi man died after losing control of his vehicle, which overturned on an icy road Monday night near Starkville, Oktibbeha County coroner Michael Hunt said Tuesday.

In Texas, three young children and their grandmother died in the Houston-area fire, which likely began while they were using a fireplace to keep warm during a power outage, a fire official said. And in Oregon, authorities on Tuesday confirmed the deaths four people last weekend in the Portland metro area of carbon monoxide poisoning.

At least 13 children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, the hospital said in a social media post, which warned that families were “going to extreme measures to warm their homes” — with propane or diesel-burning engines and generators, gas ovens and stovetops. One parent died of the toxic fumes, pediatrician Phillip Scott told Fort Worth television station KTVT.

Other Texas deaths included a woman and a girl who died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in Houston at a home without electricity from a car left running in an attached garage, and two men found along Houston-area roadways who likely died in subfreezing temperatures, law enforcement officials said.

In western Tennessee, a 10-year-old boy died after falling into an ice-covered pond on Sunday during a winter storm, fire officials said.

Several cities had record lows: In Minnesota, the Hibbing/ Chisholm weather station registered minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 39 degrees Celsius). Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26 Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius).

At midday, more than 2,700 U.S. flights had been canceled, led by more than 800 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and more than 700 at Bush Intercontinental in Houston.

Authorities pleaded with residents to stay home Tuesday. About 100 school systems closed, delayed opening or switched to remote classes in Alabama, where forecasters said conditions might not improve until temperatures rise above freezing Wednesday afternoon.

CHICAGO (AP) — Several historically Black colleges and universities will receive more than $650,000 in grants to preserve their campuses as part of a new initiative announced Tuesday.

The funding for the HBCUs comes as leaders of the colleges and universities continue to advocate for additional funding nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, which has threatened the survival of many already chronically underfunded schools. Details about the initiative were shared with The Associated Press ahead of the announcement.

HBCUs have long been underfunded as a result of decades of structural racism and lack of equitable public funding, said Brent Leggs, executive director of the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which is supplying the grants.

“They stand as a living testament to African American history and the ongoing achievements of highly influential Americans,” he said. “But they continue to be overlooked and underfunded.”

The HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative seeks to preserve HBCUs as educational institutions as well as physical spaces of historic and cultural significance. The eight schools getting the grants are: Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina; Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi; Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee; Morgan State University in Baltimore; Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas; Spelman College in Atlanta; Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; and Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama.

“The starting point is to equip HBCUs with the resources, knowledge and information they need to invest in their historic assets,” Leggs said.

The selected HBCUs will develop preservation plans for either a campuswide project or individual buildings, many of which were designed and built by Black architects. One student from each of the schools will help out carry out the preservation plans to “cultivate the next generation of Black professionals in historic preservation,” Leggs said.

The $650,000 in funding is part of a larger initiative by the National Trust, which launched the action fund in 2017 as a $25 million campaign to preserve Black culture and celebrate the historic achievements of the Black community.

The initiative is a “brilliant step forward” in addressing the history of systemic inequity HBCUs face, said Phylicia Rashad, co-chair of the initiative and the iconic actress, singer and stage director known for her role as Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” Rashad's parents and many of her aunts and uncles were educated at HBCUs, and Rashad graduated from Howard University, one of the country’s oldest HBCUs.

“I was in a space that was much more than brick and mortar," she said. "I was in a space that was the embodiment of history, of legacy, of excellence. You can feel the presence of that which has come before you. And that becomes part of you even after you leave.”

By helping preserve these spaces, Rashad feels she's carrying on the work of her ancestors, including her mother, who worked to restore a building at Brainerd

Institute, which was once a historically Black school in Chester, South Carolina.

“This is American history," she said. "And it should be recognized and honored as such.”

At Benedict College, the funding will be used to restore Duckett Hall, which was built in 1925 and is the third-oldest building of the school’s historic district.

“The years have been hard on Duckett Hall,” said Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis, president and CEO of Benedict College. Water leaking in from windows has caused a “host of structural problems.”

“Often on our campuses, we fix what’s broken in that moment,” Artis said. “If a window breaks, we fix the window. If a pipe breaks, we fix the pipe. This grant will help us start with the leaky windows but also fully assess the building and create a strategic plan for preservation long term.”

Many HBCUs were already struggling financially before COVID-19 hit. Leaders of the schools have advocated for additional federal funding in the wake of the pandemic.

Artis said drops in enrollment and the number of students living on campus have led to significant financial loss for Benedict College, making this funding even more timely. But financial struggles are far from new.

“We spend our money on students and learning,” she said. “We’re often unable to replace windows and address these physical challenges as easily as predominantly white institutions. These buildings are symbolic of our history and how far we’ve come. If they fall into disrepair, it sends the message that they don’t matter, that our history doesn’t matter.”

Federal initiatives also have taken aim at better supporting HBCUs. Under President Donald Trump’s administration, bipartisan legislation passed in December 2019 made permanent $255 million in annual STEM funding for colleges serving racial minorities in a plan that included $85 million for HBCUs. The bill restored funding that lapsed earlier that year when Congress failed to renew it. Near the end of Trump’s presidency, several HBCUs, including South Carolina State University, Talladega College, Jackson State University and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, received additional federal funding.

The National Trust initiative follows increased attention on HBCUs, fueled in part by Kamala Harris recently making history as the first woman, first Black and South Asian person, and first HBCU graduate to become vice president of the United States. And during President Joe Biden’s campaign, he pledged to address the historic underfunding of HBCUs, especially regarding federal research dollars. In his higher education plan, Biden included $20 billion to help HBCUs and other institutions serving minority students to bolster research efforts and another $10 billion to create centers of excellence at colleges centered around educating students of color.

“Having Vice President Kamala Harris representing the excellence and legacy of an HBCU is increasing the recognition of these historic academic institutions,” Leggs said. “That is beautiful. That gives me hope for better support for these institutions.”

This pine knot once contained $1,000 in gold pieces! During the Civil War, when it became apparent that the Northern Forces were going to take Arkansas, Benjamin Clardy of the Francois area bored a hole in the end of a pine knot the size of a twenty-dollar gold piece.

He put the gold in the pine knot and plugged the hole with another pine knot cut to fit. He then burned the knot enough to hide the work and buried it a few feet deep under the ground. After things settled down, he had a couple of men dig in the spot. He picked up the pine knot, and told the men not to dig anymore, as the money was not there. This Museum Minute shared with you from your HSCMuseum where you can find the pine knot from this true story. The museum is open Wednesday-Friday from 12:30 to 4:30pm. Masks are required.