SAC CITY - Nearly three days after an ice storm struck much of central and western Iowa, many Sac County residents are still finding themselves in the dark.

Gov. Chet Culver issued a state of emergency for Sac, Carroll and Cass counties Thursday after Wednesday's storm coated much of those west central Iowa counties with an inch of ice.

The ice weighted down and broke power lines, causing widespread outages throughout Sac County that are expected to last into the weekend, Jim Bullock, Sac County Emergency Management coordinator, said Friday.

"Seven out of nine municipalities in Sac County are without power right now," Bullock said. "We have complete cities without any power and Sac City is still out."

The MidAmerican Energy Web site reported that 2,669 - approximately 70 percent - of its 3,780 Sac County customers were still without power Friday afternoon.

River Valley Rural Electrical Cooperative Chief Executive Officer Jim Bagley said more than 600 of its customers in rural Sac County, including the entire community of Auburn, were also without electricity Friday evening.

"Right now, we have the most power outages in Sac County," said Bagley.

Bagley said River Valley REC has been bringing in out-of-state contractors and help from other electrical cooperatives across the state to help restore power to customers.

Finding them places to stay has been another challenge.

"We're bringing in help from other areas, but we're finding it hard to get them into hotels that have power," he said. "They're all filling fast with workers from MidAmerican, too."

Bagley hoped power would be restored to Auburn Friday evening, but didn't have an exact estimate on when power would be back on for the rest of the county.

"We're looking at what could be an extended outage," he said.

The American Red Cross has also been called to assist Sac County residents by providing warming stations throughout the county, including an emergency shelter with cots, food and bathing facilities at the Sac Community Recreation Center in Sac City.

Contact Emilie Nelson at (515) 573-2141 or enelson@messengernews.net