Guard helps firefighters gain control of blazes

Wind and wildfires forced Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois to cancel appearances in Roanoke. Roanoke County officials announced changes for several polling locations ahead of today’s presidential primary election.

In Louisa, local firefighters were getting help from four Northern Virginia localities to combat flames near Bumpass and Mineral. County emergency manager Mike Schlemmer said the fires were contained, but he was concerned about the low humidity.

Roanoke County officials said brush fires had consumed more than 400 acres and the two largest blazes had joined yesterday morning to form one fire.

“They may have some fires still burning but mostly it’s under control,” Mr. Spieldenner said. “We’re in much better shape than we were yesterday.”

The winds diminished throughout yesterday, but windy conditions helped push wind chills below zero overnight in western Virginia.

Many Virginia homes had no power in Sunday night’s bitter cold.

More than 80,000 Appalachian Power Co. customers in Virginia had lost power by Sunday evening, spokesman Todd Burns said.

Mr. Burns also said the continuing gusty winds would hamper restoration efforts in the worst-hit areas, and customers should prepare for a lengthy outage.

Dominion Virginia Power spokesman David Botkins said 215,000 customers had been affected by the high winds and outages. By yesterday afternoon, 9,586 were still without power.

Baltimore Gas & Electric had as many as 48,010 outages and reported 1,477 still lacking power yesterday afternoon. Potomac Electric Power Co. was down to 713 outages.