New England was struck Thursday by a massive ice storm, leaving more than 300,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts and New Hampshire with no power Sunday, and the outage could last for days for many consumers, say officials.

Lead statesmen, among them New Hampshire’s Governor John Lynch, urged residents to take refuge in emergency shelters, hotels, or with family and friends, after make-shift heaters set up temporarily by people caused fires in several homes in both states or caused deadly emissions of carbon monoxide.

At least four deaths related to the storm were reported by emergency management officials. A 49-year-old man died in Danville, N.H., because of carbon monoxide poisoning from a clogged exhaust pipe in a gas-powered generator he was using to heat his recreational vehicle. A couple in New York state were also poisoned with carbon monoxide from home generators. Finally, a Massachusetts public works supervisor who went missing while checking for storm damage was found dead. His body was fished out from a reservoir.

Many communities face downed power lines and fallen trees in addition to the lack of electricity, which has determined local officials to cancel school. Aside from the cut off power and property damage, denizens of New Hampshire had to cope with dropping temperatures that went as low as the teens and 20s early on Sunday, and even single-digit values in certain parts of New Hampshire and Maine. Notably Fryeburg, Maine, hit a low of 2 degrees above zero. Weather reports promise a warm-up in starting Monday.

Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management cannot give a precise estimation of when things will be back to normal, but believes it is a matter of a few days. He said in a statement that the biggest concern currently is the huge amount of debris; crews are out clearing roads, chainsaw-in-hand, as many communities’ secondary roads are not sufficiently serviceable to bring bucket trucks to.

Shelters in Massachusetts saw a surge of people, with their number nearly doubling Saturday to 1,800 chilled souls who spent another night with no lights and no heat. Some 1,300 people stayed at 56 shelters in New Hampshire.

Saturday president Bush declared a state of either limited or full emergency in nine Massachusetts counties, from Suffolk to Berkshires as well as a large part of New Hampshire. Roughly 50% of the state was blacked out Friday at the height of the outage, with some 25% of residents still without power on Sunday. A number of 300 national guardsmen were deployed to New Hampshire to help with cleaning up the debris, mostly in Stoddard, which is 27 miles north of Jaffrey.

Further power failures could still is possible, as officials warn that drooping branches shedding ice could snap back to their original position, taking out more power lines in the process. Caution is advised.