USA Today, by Dinah Voyles Pulver: Dozens of names have been added to a mounting death toll from the Jan. 23-26 winter storm and the blast of polar air behind it, even as many Americans brace for another possible storm.
At least 62 deaths had been reported across the nation through the evening of Jan. 27. Authorities are still investigating these cases and others.
In Fannin County in northeast Texas, a community was heartbroken when three brothers – ages 6, 8 and 9 – died after falling through the ice on a pond, Sheriff Cody Shook confirmed to USA TODAY. The family was playing outside when the youngest boy fell through the ice and his brothers tried to save him as their mother rushed toward them, CBS News reported.
Teenagers died in motor vehicle and sledding accidents.
At least eight people died during or after shoveling or removing snow, authorities reported. The American Heart Association has warned the exertion of snow shoveling, especially in extreme cold, can lead to heart attacks.
An Indiana man whose name was not released had been out shoveling his driveway three or four times on Jan. 25, said Adams County Coroner Francis Dutrow. “The last time, he went back into his house and collapsed and went into cardiac arrest.”
“That storm was awful,” Dutrow said Jan. 27. “It’s like 15 degrees here and no sign of letting up.”
At least two women died in house fires, a problem that tends to spike during winter, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
In South Carolina, a 96-year-old woman with dementia collapsed outside her home just after midnight on the morning of Jan. 26 and died, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. She was one of more than two dozen people whose deaths were believed to be related to hypothermia and exposure.
Winter storm death toll by state
New York, where 10 people died outside, led the nation at the end of Jan. 27 with 11 deaths.
9 – Indiana
8 – Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas
4 – Mississippi and Pennsylvania
2 – Arkansas and Massachusetts
1 – Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and South Carolina
How did people die?
Investigations continue as authorities work in temperatures up to 30 degrees below normal, and subzero wind chills in some cases, to piece together why deaths occurred. They’re trying to pinpoint, for example, whether icy roads and snow were the cause of at least nine fatalities in car accidents throughout the storm.
Law enforcement officials also were investigating why Juanita Cannon, 54, was found dead outside her car in Evansville, Indiana, and why Rubilio Mendez Reynoso, 31, of Buncombe County, North Carolina, was found dead lying along a road with no evidence of foul play.
In Henrico County, Virginia, police said they were working to determine what happened when a toddler had to be rescued from an icy pond on Jan. 26. The child later died.
An adult male at the scene at the pond was treated for possible hypothermia, according to a statement from Henrico Police.
Hospitals reported treating many who suffered medical emergencies while shoveling snow. The UMASS Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts – where snow totals were as high as 22 inches – reported that over about 24 hours on Jan. 25 and 26, it treated seven patients with major heart attacks who had been shoveling snow.
3 brothers fall through ice, rocking community
The three brothers, whose identities were not released by authorities who cited the family’s privacy, fell through pond ice on private property just outside Bonham, Texas, a small city near the Oklahoma border.
First responders pulled the two oldest boys, 8 and 9, from the water with the help of a neighbor, but the third, age 6, was not found until the pond was searched, according to the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office. First aid was given to the older boys, and they were taken away in an ambulance. All three were pronounced dead.
“They were just screaming, telling me to help them,” their mother, Cheyenne Hangaman, told The Associated Press. “And I watched all of them struggle, struggle to stay above the water. I watched all of them fight.”
Hangaman told the AP that her daughter alerted her that the boys were in the water, and she ran across the street from where they were staying to help them, falling into the water herself.
“I would grab one, try to put him on ice, but the ice just kept breaking every time I would sit him up there,” she told the outlet.
Hangaman said a man threw a rope to help get her out of the pond.
“I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move,” she said. “By that time I knew that my kids were already gone. So I just had to try to fight for my life at that point.”
The Bonham Independent School District in Texas confirmed three of its elementary students died.
“We are devastated by this unimaginable loss, and our thoughts are with the family, friends, and all who loved these children,” the district said in a statement.
Prophetic Link:
“There will soon be a sudden change in God’s dealings. The world in its perversity is being visited by casualties,—by floods, storms, fires, earthquakes, famines, wars, and bloodshed. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power; yet He will not at all acquit the wicked. “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.” O that men might understand the patience and longsuffering of God! He is putting under restraint His own attributes. His omnipotent power is under the control of Omnipotence. O that men would understand that God refuses to be wearied out with the world’s perversity, and still holds out the hope of forgiveness even to the most undeserving! But His forbearance will not always continue. Who is prepared for the sudden change that will take place in God’s dealing with sinful men? Who will be prepared to escape the punishment that will certainly fall upon transgressors?” Final Events, 356.2