Charlotte, N.C. ? Utility repair crews made more progress Saturday at restoring electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers blacked out by a major ice storm, as National Guard troops searched for people needing help.

Gov. Mike Easley went on a three-city tour Saturday to survey damage from one of the worst winter storms in state history, before he was even able to get a good look at his own home.

One of the places on Easley’s itinerary in Charlotte was a shelter where 84-year-old Anne Mills was playing checkers with 7-year-old Steve McCorkle.

“I’ve been here since the morning of the storm, and I sure as hell want some clean clothes,” Mills said.

Temperatures climbed into the 40s for a second day, helping to melt any ice remaining from the storm that arrived Wednesday on a path that took it from the southern Plains into the Northeast. At least 29 deaths were blamed on the storm and its aftermath.

The latest casualties, a 79-year-old man from Shelby and a 31-year-old man in Durham, died of carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to heat their homes, police said. Their bodies were discovered Saturday.

More than 200 others have sought medical help for carbon monoxide poisoning since the devastating ice storm :quot; many of them Hispanic or Asian immigrants who commonly heated homes with cooking fuels in their native countries, authorities said.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, right, and Duke Energy chairman and CEO Richard Priory look at storm damage in a Charlotte, N.C., neighborhood. With them on the Saturday tour of winter storm damage is Bryan Beatty, center, secretary of the state's Department of Crime Control & Public Safety. Nearly a million people are still without power after the Carolinas were ravaged by a severe ice storm last week.

Some 300 National Guard volunteers fanned out Saturday into some of the hardest hit areas to knock on doors and ask if residents had heat or power.

Utility officials said they had made progress at fixing broken power lines, but nearly 1.1 million customers :quot; homes and businesses :quot; remained without electricity Saturday in North and South Carolina.

Utility officials acknowledged on Friday that many customers wouldn’t have power back until next Wednesday.

Duke Power said it had about 750,000 customers without power in North Carolina and South Carolina. Carolina Power & Light had 181,000 North Carolina customers without power. North Carolina’s electric cooperatives reported 50,380 outages.