June 3, 2004
By SHEILA FLYNN

DALLAS (AP) - Another round of storms raked the Dallas area, cutting electricity to more homes and businesses, and officials warned that outages from back-to-back storms may linger for several days.

The storm that battered the region late Tuesday left about 280,000 homes and businesses across the Dallas-Fort Worth area still without electricity late Wednesday, said TXU Electric Delivery spokeswoman Carol Peters. That was down from more than a half-million customers who lost power at the height of the storm.

"This particular storm was in another realm," Peters said.

New storms moved through the Dallas area late Wednesday, and an additional 20,000 outages were reported.

And in Oklahoma, about 100,000 customers lost power in storms that struck there Wednesday afternoon.

Two people died in Texas; one while driving on a rain-slick road, the other killed when a tree fell on his mobile home. One woman was killed in a weather-related accident in Oklahoma City.

It probably will be midday Friday before power is restored to all customers in the region around Dallas, said TXU chairman Tom Baker.

"We've got miles and miles of wire down," Baker told The Dallas Morning News. "In addition, we have to go in and clear debris and trim trees. And we've got limited numbers of crews available to do that."

Damage in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was tentatively estimated at $100 million, according to the Southwestern Insurance Information Service, an industry group. Most of the damage was due to wind, spokeswoman Sandra Ray said.

Texans dealt with the outages as best they could.

Joy Nguyen's family in Dallas had their refrigerator shut off, and she was trying to preserve food by packing it with dry ice.

"My husband, who works at home and uses his computer to do most of his work, is pulling his hair out because he can't get anything done," she said. "Today is such a bad day."

As Dallas-Fort Worth assessed the damage Wednesday, travelers were told to stay away from windows at the Tulsa International Airport in Oklahoma as winds up to 80 mph raked the area, said Ken Miller, the airport's deputy director. Flights were delayed until the storm passed.

Airport Director Brent Kitchen said a 50-foot by 75-foot strip of insulation was torn off a concourse's concrete roof.

In Tulsa, windows were shattered and roofs damaged, while outside Wright, Kan., high wind derailed 69 empty grain cars on a Burlington Northern-Santa Fe train, officials said. No one was injured.

At the Dallas Affaires Cake Co., employees worried how to preserve 17 wedding cakes - at least one costing more than $1,000 - without refrigeration. The bakery finally found an available cooler in the catering kitchen at a Dallas business center.

"We're pretty much moving our entire shop over there," manager Cassandra Henry said. "They really helped save the day."

"With 17 weddings, this was going to be a bad weekend to begin with."

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