AUSTIN (AP) – Winter weather brought ice to a wide swath of the United States (US) on Tuesday, cancelling more than 1,700 flights nationwide and snarling highways. At least two people died on slick roads in Texas and two law officers in the state were seriously injured, including a deputy who was pinned under a truck, authorities said.
As the ice storm advanced eastward on Tuesday, watches and warnings stretched from the western heel of Texas all the way to West Virginia. Several rounds of mixed precipitation – including freezing rain and sleet – were in store for many areas through the next day, meaning some regions could be hit multiple times, the federal Weather Prediction Center warned.
Emergency responders rushed to hundreds of auto collisions across Texas and Republican Governor Greg Abbott urged people to stay off the roads.
Authorities said one person in Austin was killed in a pre-dawn pile-up on Tuesday. A 45-year-old man also died on Monday night after his SUV slid into a highway guardrail near Dallas in slick conditions and rolled down an embankment, according to the Arlington Police
Department.
More than 900 flights to or from major US airport hub Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and more than 250 to or from Dallas Love Field were cancelled or delayed on Tuesday, according to the tracking service FlightAware. At Dallas-Fort Worth, more than 50 per cent of Tuesday’s scheduled flights had been cancelled by Tuesday afternoon.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines cancelled more than 560 flights on Tuesday and delayed more than 350 more, FlightAware reported.
About 7,000 power outages in Texas were reported as of late Tuesday morning, Republican Governor Greg Abbott said following a briefing in Austin on the worsening conditions. He emphasized the outages were due to factors such as ice on power lines or downed trees, and not the performance of the Texas power grid that buckled for days during a deadly winter storm in 2021.
Fleets of emergency vehicles were fanned out among 1,600 roads impacted by the freeze.
In Texas, a sheriff’s deputy who stopped to help the driver of an 18-wheeler that went off an icy highway on Tuesday was hit by a second truck that pinned him beneath one of its tires, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office. About 45 minutes after the crash on State Highway 130, the deputy was freed from the wreckage and taken to a hospital, where he was in surgery on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. The deputy is expected to survive, officials said.
In another wreck, a Texas state trooper was hospitalised with serious injuries after being struck by a driver who lost control of their vehicle, said Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety Steve McCraw.
“The roadways are very hazardous right now. We cannot overemphasise that,” Abbott said.
As the ice and sleet enveloped Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis-Shelby County Schools announced that it will cancel classes due to freezing rain and hazardous road conditions.
The school system has about 100,000 students. The University of Memphis said it would announce plans for classes in the morning.
