Winter Storm Battering East Coast
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's a one-two punch for part of the nation. Coming on the heels of one winter storm, another one is battering the East Coast. Here's our Gary Tuchman.</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were fishing on iced over Lake Erie in north central Ohio. But then high winds cracked the ice. Fourteen men were stranded on ice chunks until they were rescued by the Coast Guard. They were luckier than some others. A complex series of winter storms from the Plains to the East Coast, from the Great Lakes to Dixie has left at least 25 people dead. In Omaha, Nebraska, four people, including children, were killed when their car slid into a truck.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Snow and ice on the roads and having an individual lose control.</s>TUCHMAN: Pittsburgh has also been hit hard by the snow.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need four wheel for this. This is really bad.</s>TUCHMAN: In other places, ice and freezing rain are the problems. Like the Carolinas and Georgia, where firefighters braved the cold to fight a fire caused when a tanker slid off a highway that, in essence, became a skating rink. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a man who got out of his vehicle after an accident on the bridge had a very close call. Another driver slammed into his pickup truck, almost knocking him off the bridge. He was not seriously hurt. In the nation's capital, snow plows cleared the streets while skiers snowplowed near the Washington Monument. In Philadelphia, the plows and salt trucks tried to keep up with the snow and ice.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got a late start so the roads have been plowed a little bit. Ice, a little dangerous in spots.</s>TUCHMAN: Dangerous in Missouri, too, where 18 wheelers were sliding off roadways choked with snow and accidents. Hundreds of flights were canceled at the nation's airports. Tens of thousands of people were without power. The weather even caused President Bush to change his plans. After returning from a visit to Arkansas, his helicopter trip from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House was scrapped for a snowy motorcade.</s>WHITFIELD: And since Gary Tuchman filed that report, the death toll has risen to at least 35.