Governor Steve Beshear deployed every last one of his Army National Guardsmen today, with his state still reeling after a deadly ice storm encrusted it this week.
More than half a million homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained without electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia, though temperatures creeping into the 40s helped a swarm of utility workers make headway.
Finding fuel - heating oil along with gas for cars and generators - was another struggle for those trying to tough it out at home, with hospitals and other essential services getting priority over members of the public.
The addition of 3,000 soldiers and airmen makes 4,600 Guardsmen pressed into service.
It's the largest call-up in Kentucky history, which Beshear called an appropriate response to a storm that cut power to more than 700,000 homes and businesses, the state's largest outage on record.
Many people in rural areas cannot get out of their driveways due to debris and have no phone service, the governor said."With the length of this disaster and what we're expecting to be a multi-day process here, we're concerned about the lives and the safety of our people in their own homes,"
He said, "and we need the manpower in some of the rural areas to go door-to-door and do a door-to-door canvass ... and make sure they're OK."
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Kentucky could use a heatwave right about now.
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