Sanford declares emergency in wake of storm

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During the day, Upstate residents tried to go on about their lives, as workers dumped sand on roads and some of the ice melted, but conditions were expected to be hazardous again this morning.

Gov. Mark Sanford on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in South Carolina.

Under the governor's order, the South Carolina Emergency Operations Plan was placed into effect, waiving size and weight regulations for out-of-state utility vehicles coming to South Carolina to assist in restoring power to residents. The South Carolina National Guard also was placed on standby status.

"A lot of the roads did melt today, but all the liquid on them will refreeze tonight so roads will be slick again in the morning," said Lance Cpl. Dan Marsceau, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol. "Even throughout the day we expect patches of ice, particularly on secondary roads."

Between 5 p.m. Monday and the same time Tuesday, 299 wrecks were reported in five Upstate counties, but none of the crashes were fatal, Marsceau said.

Gordon Mayes, a 38-year-old FedEx driver, said ice on secondary and residential roads made his job difficult.

"But we're trying to get to a lot of the businesses and hospitals, people who need pharmacy, payroll," he said, while making a stop on First Street in Easley. "Other than that we're just trying to do the best we can.

The temperature got up to 38 degrees Tuesday but was expected to drop to about 20 overnight, according to the National Weather Service.

"There will most likely be a significant amount of black ice (Wednesday) morning," said Bryan McAvoy, meteorologist.

Temperatures should get up to the mid-40s during the day, with no precipitation in sight at least through Thursday, he said.

Of the 3,400 who had no power late Tuesday, more than 2,700 were in Greenwood County, said Tim Pettit, a spokesman for Duke. Another 517 were in Laurens County, 70 were in Newberry, 44 in Anderson and three in Greenville County.

"The great majority of those folks will be back on by midnight tonight," Pettit said Tuesday afternoon. However, there were about 1,000 of those "in areas that are really hard hit where it will be early afternoon (Wednesday) before we have it back on."

Duke brought in 375 workers from power companies in Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia to help with the biggest of the outages, but by late Tuesday they had been released to go to parts of South Carolina that were harder hit, Pettit said.

"You've got to think about safety first," he said. "You've got to make sure you've got a systematic approach going, so you don't energize a line that you have people working on."

Once the lines that affect the most people are fixed, the remaining problems tend to be isolated, and part of the problem is getting to the site over icy rural roads, he said.

Greenwood's abundance of pine trees caught the brunt of the ice storm, which put the bulk of the outages there, he said.

Even in Greenville County, emergency officials had trouble navigating some of the icy hills.

A 20-ton pumper truck responding to an accident couldn't find a grip on the sheet of ice covering Batesview Drive in Greenville.

The Greenville city fire truck joined an ambulance and police responding to a woman five months pregnant whose vehicle had run off the road at Batesview Drive and Carmel Street, said fire Lt. Harold Smith.

Backing up, the fire truck started to slide, despite snow chains on its back wheels, and fell into a three-foot culvert. Batesview was a solid sheet of ice.

"We almost hit her," Smith said of the pregnant woman's car.

No one was hurt in the incident, and the truck suffered only a bent tail board, Smith said. He said he didn't blame the driver for what happened.

Moments after the truck was pulled out of the culvert, a sand truck arrived. Its wheels spun as it tried to ascend the hill on Batesview Drive leading up to East North Street.

Ray Gunter spent Tuesday morning pulling half a dozen neighbors around North Main Street out of ditches.

"The last guy was all the way in a hole," he said Tuesday afternoon. "He had two wheels off the ground."

He was able to hook a rope to the disabled vehicles, throw his Bronco in reverse and pull them out.

For many people, the second day of living with ice was more of an irritation than anything.

Jennifer Fendley, a clerk at Zee Mart, a convenience store and gas station in Easley, said the trickiest part for her was making it to the bathroom. Fendley, 21, had to basically skate down a slope to another building.

"That makes for a ride going down the hill," she said.

In Greenville County, workers spread 70 tons of sand. In Easley, the streets department ran out of sand but managed to find more to take care of several steep slopes on Lakeshore Drive.

"We may have to go down to the river and get some, but we'll get some," said Cecil Nalley, who heads the department. Garbage pickup will run on a one-day-late schedule, he said.

Garbage hasn't been picked up in the city of Greenville since the sleet started falling, but trash collection was expected resume today. Residents should put their cans by the curb and can expect them to be emptied by Saturday, said Ed Marr, solid waste administrator.

"We'll be doing double duty to play catch up," he said.

Statewide, the Department of Transportation had 910 employees on the job, with 442 equipment units spreading 5,868 tons of salt, 27,665 gallons of calcium chloride, 15,400 gallons of salt brine and 6,937 tons of sand.

What Anderson County couldn't do, Ricky Bates did. Like many of his neighbors, Bates couldn't make it to work because of the layers of ice accumulating on the roads. Salt trucks had not been in his subdivision off River Road in Piedmont for two days.

After seeing four vehicles — including three trucks — spin their wheels helplessly trying to get up a steep hill on Woodfield Drive, a frustrated Bates took action. Ice flew in the air as he pushed his red roto-tiller up the hill forming a two-foot-wide rut so cars could navigate the steep climb. No sooner had he finished did a small black car inch its way up the hill and out of the icy mess.

Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport operated Tuesday on a limited basis.

"The runway is open. We've had our maintenance crews out around the clock," said Rosylin Weston, GSP spokeswoman.

The problem was not with the local airport but with weather conditions at destination airports, she said.

"This storm is going up the coastline," affecting many of the regions to which GSP flights are scheduled, she said.

Passengers should call the airlines they are using to determine the status of their flights, she said.

Joe Farmer, director of state Emergency Preparedness, said people should not use charcoal in their fireplaces, should carefully monitor kerosene heaters and only some propane heaters.

He said people should load up on batteries, flashlights and battery-operated radios.

Anna Brutzman, Jenny Munro, Paul Alongi, John Boyanoski and Andy Paras contributed to this report.