LAKE GENEVA, Wis. (AP) — Three children who died when a boat capsized in Geneva Lake during a Wisconsin storm were wearing life vests, authorities said as the nation assessed damage from storms and a heat wave that marred the July Fourth holiday, leaving hundreds of thousands of utility customers without power.The tragedy in Wisconsin’s Walworth County in a part of Southern Wisconsin that has long served as a favorite vacation getaway for residents of the Chicago area came with a storm that downed trees, ruptured power lines and made transportation treacherous and complicated across multiple states.It was a trio of calamities that repeated itself each time storms doused a region. After a similarly vicious storm struck the New York area late Friday, hundreds of thousands of utility customers were left without power, trains to New Jersey were canceled and thousands of trees were damaged or uprooted.
Combined with the Midwest storms, nearly 1 million residents were left powerless. By noon Saturday, about 750,000 utility customers were powerless in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and New Jersey.
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But the Wisconsin deaths stood out for how quickly the extreme weather could turn a holiday weekend pleasure outing into a nightmare.As the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Agency investigated the Geneva Lake tragedy, the city’s police department issued a statement blaming it on a “sudden and severe storm” that rapidly produced hazards for boats.
