Winter Storm Atlas causes fatal wreck, knocks out power
An early-autumn blizzard hammered the Nebraska panhandle Friday, including the Chadron area, killing three people, downing numerous trees and power lines, leaving hundreds without electricity, and scores of others without telephone and Internet service.
Just before 8:15 a.m. Friday, Brandon Clark, 23, of Lincoln, lost control of the Ford Explorer he was driving westbound and veered into the other lane, colliding with a semi headed eastbound, Nebraska State Patrol Captain Mike Gaudreautt, said Tuesday. The collision occurred six miles east of Crawford on highway 20.
Clark and passengers, Sandra Clark, 43, of Phillipsburg, Kan., and Patsy Baumgarner, 66, of Lincoln, were killed in the wreck. Semi driver John Ellis, 56, of Edgerton, Minn., was transferred to the Chadron Community Hospital to be treated for minor injuries, Gaudreautt said.
No other injuries or deaths were reported as a result of the winter storm.
The storm started as slushy rain before dawn Friday. It then turned to freezing rain and snow by about 9 a.m. and continued through Saturday morning, leaving nearly 10 inches of snow in its wake.
It forced college officials to cancel nearly all of the homecoming activities and to postpone the homecoming football game from 1:30 p.m. Saturday to noon Sunday.
Mark Becker, Nebraska Public Power District’s media specialist, said power went out about 2:14 p.m. Friday. NPPD crew members were working to restore power, but as of 3 p.m. Saturday numerous customers were still without power. He could not state when it would be fully restored.
“It depends on what the situation is,” he said. “If a lot of trees are down then they have to sort through the trees.”
As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, Becker said the NPPD has restored all the power it could, however; 36 people are still without power. This is due to the amount of damage to the power source, he said, and the NPPD cannot do anything until those places have an electrician go in and fix the problem. Over the weekend, about 600 people were without power, he said, because once one area had power, another area’s power would shut down.
In addition to power outages, the storm also cut cell phone service to numerous AT&T and Viaero Wireless customers.
Viaero Wireless cell phone service in the Chadron area was down due to tower issues, a Viaero customer service representative said Saturday.
The representative asked not to be identified because she is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
She said the last report received Saturday, at 8:31 a.m., indicated that crews were not able to reach the towers to isolate the problem.
She was not permitted to release how many customers were affected, and declined to give more information regarding the outage, adding that Viaero public relations would not be available to comment because it was a weekend.
AT&T representatives did not release information regarding their service outage.
Roads near Chadron were closed due to severe driving conditions. Highway 385 north and south of Chadron, and highway 20 east and west of Crawford were closed, according to www.511.nebraska.gov.
