While the UK struggles with snow, spare a thought for Kentucky, which is suffering from an ice storm:
The storm has been blamed for 27 deaths in Kentucky, mostly from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators. More than 175,000 homes and businesses served by 55 water systems remained under orders to boil water, emergency officials said.
But there’s good news for my GD colleagues who major on community resilience:
The chairwoman of an Ohio County school board converted a middle school into a shelter. And in Murray, Murray State University’s student-run radio station was the only source of communication.
An unexpected problem has emerged, however: a peanut panic.
Making matters worse, because of a recent salmonella outbreak, federal officials on Thursday recalled all “ready to eat” meal kits that included packets of peanut butter. The packets had been distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In a news conference on Thursday, Gov. Steve Beshear tried to send a reassuring message to residents who had received the food packages. He said there had been no reports of food-related illnesses, even though more than 100,000 emergency packages had been given out in storm recovery efforts.
Mr. Beshear said he had eaten one of the peanut butter products and suffered no ill effects. As an alternative, emergency officials were trying to hire a private food vendor to secure hundreds of thousands of prepared meals, the governor said.
Yum yum.
