Ice Storm

In Baltimore CountyMinnick elected to chair county's House delegationANNAPOLIS -- Joseph J. "Sonny" Minnick, a Dundalk Democrat, has been elected chairman of the 27-member Baltimore County House delegation in Annapolis.James E. Malone Jr., whose district includes parts of Baltimore and Howard counties, was elected vice chairman, and Katherine Klausmeier, who represents parts of Perry Hall, White Marsh and Baltimore City, was elected secretary. The votes were unanimous.Hereford High exams pushed back because of ice stormHEREFORD -- Last week's ice storm has caused semester exams at Hereford High School to be delayed until Thursday.

After a long weekend without power, thousands of Baltimore-area utility customers may finally be able to come out of the cold and dark today. Power was expected to be restored early today to most of the 10,000 customers who have been without service since Thursday night's ice storms, said Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. spokeswoman Brenda Pettigrew. That figure, as of midnight, was down from 29,000 earlier in the day. Most of the remaining outages were in Howard, Carroll and Baltimore counties, forcing customers to line up for dry ice, book hotel rooms, stay with relatives, crowd into restaurants -- and wait in frustration for their lights and heat to come back on. In Montgomery County, a fire and multiple explosions yesterday at a Potomac Electric Power Co. substation in Olney resulted in the loss of eight substations and knocked out electricity to an estimated 70,000 homes and businesses.

From the Washington suburbs to the Pennsylvania line, tens of thousands of Marylanders shivered with no electricity yesterday while others struggled to clear downed trees and branches and the governor declared a state of emergency in six counties.Just before midnight last night, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. reported that 75,000 customers were still without power.At its peak, more than 332,000 customers -- 119,000 in the Baltimore area -- lost electric service as tree limbs weighted with melting ice toppled across power lines, forcing BGE to summon out-of-state crews for the first time in almost two decades.

GORHAM, Maine -- Five generations ago, the land was given to one of Everett L. Towle's ancestors -- payment, family lore has it, for service in the Indian wars.Over the years, it has been variously farmed, hunted or left to revert to woods. The land served the family well: When it was time for Towle to go to college, his father cut some trees and sold them to pay the tuition.Last winter, though, the steadfast land took a serious hit. Two ice storms that paralyzed much of the state for several weeks in January were devastating to its trees.

FRONT ROYAL, Va. -- The Great Tree Blow-down in the Shenandoah National Park looks like a giant game of pickup sticks.Ice-laden branches broke, crashed and are tangled in each other. Trees were uprooted and lie willy-nilly. Limbs cracked apart and hang over roads and trails. Thousands of downed, bent branches -- like arrows in drawn bows -- wait to slap workmen trying to clear the way."This is like crawling around in barbed wire," said Bobby Lang, of Luray, Va., who was chain-sawing his way through a large scramble of limbs at the Indian Run Overlook on the Skyline Drive.

The popular Skyline Drive in Virginia has been closed by fallen trees and snow since late January and will remain blocked several more weeks after its worst ice storms in decades.The road and its environs atop the Shenandoah National Park have lost thousands of trees and tree limbs in three separate storms in late January and February. No one has been reported hurt, but damage is estimated at $700,000."In 25 plus years here, I've never seen ice storms so severe and the road closed so long," said park spokesman Lyn Rothgeb.

BRIDGTON, Me. -- Somewhere in the icy reaches of this crystalline war zone, Steve Pryor of Centreville is hoping to find a dash of Old Bay."At dinner last night I asked the nice Maine waitress if she could put some Old Bay on some steamed shrimp for me," says the 30-year-old Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. utility pole worker."

"The Ice Storm" stands in perfect contemplative counterpoint to the fervid energy of "Boogie Nights," but just because it's the quieter cousin by no means lessens its wallop. Rather than surface brilliance and raw energy, its power lies in the precise calibration of its emotional elements, which accumulate almost imperceptibly into a shattering and unforgettable whole."The Ice Storm," which director Ang Lee adapted from the Rick Moody novel, transpires over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, when Nixon's betrayal of the country is being re-enacted in miniature in at least two houses in New Canaan, Conn.

Don Disney, coordinator of athletics in Howard County, had a difficult decision Monday. With weather people telling everyone about a storm advisory and the possibility of freezing rain, Disney had to decide by 1 p.m. Monday if athletic events that day would proceed.He decided to play it safe, postponing all games and canceling practices."No way did we want to get caught in an ice storm," said Disney. "The weather people were calling for ice. There was an advisory out. It turned out they were wrong, and it made us look bad."

The delivery room for the birth of Maisha Palmer's baby cost $10 -- the back seat of an unlicensed taxi outside St. Agnes Hospital amid the icy weather Tuesday evening.Miss Palmer, a 17-year-old senior at Franklin High School in Baltimore County, had been at Sinai Hospital earlier in the day but was sent home -- only to go into labor at her grandmother's home in Catonsville at 6 p.m., when her water broke.Her mother, Sandy Palmer, decided they should head back to Sinai -- joined in the crowded cab by the young woman's boyfriend, Redin Bowie, 21, and her cousin Andrea Bell.