In Bardstown, Michelle Hall said Friday that after enduring the cold at home alone for seven hours — despite reassurances that power would be restored soon — she finally lost patience. At 3 a.m. Wednesday, she walked to the town’s only storm shelter.  “I’m originally from Oklahoma, and I’ve been in tornadoes,” Ms. Hall said. “But this scared me more, just sitting in the dark and cold.”  State officials said they were most worried about restoring electricity to water treatment plants and pump stations, where power failures had cut off access to water.  State officials distributed generators before and soon after the storm, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency was shipping in an additional 50 to disperse to places most in need.  Federal emergency officials were also unloading truckloads of ready-to-eat meals and bottled water to a staging area in Fort Campbell, said Mary Hudak, an agency spokeswoman for the Southeast region.  The parent company of Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities may borrow tanks from the National Guard to reach its most remote customers, said Chip Keeling, a spokesman for the companies.  “As the ice and snow begins melting,” Mr. Keeling said, “very deep trenches will form. It is the worst storm ever in our minds, in terms of wires down, circuits locked out and more infrastructure damage.”  Since hotels throughout the state were completely booked, police officers and others were going door to door to let people know the locations of shelters. Phone lines, cellphone service and Internet access were spotty, making it difficult to contact people.  Having hunkered down, some families were starting to emerge Friday to pick up supplies.  “We wear jackets in the house,” said Sandra Rodriguez as she sought food at a Red Cross shelter in Louisville. Pregnant with her fifth child, Ms. Rodriguez said her four other children were fine, even though the house had been without heat or electricity for three days. “All the kids sleep in my bed,” she said.  Beth Davidson, a volunteer at the shelter, said it was housing nearly 300 people displaced by the storm and feeding up to 500.  “I’ve lived in Kentucky my entire life,” Ms. Davidson said, “and I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”  In southwestern Kentucky, officials at Murray State University in Murray were fielding calls from parents checking on their children.  After the campus lost power, university officials canceled classes and shut off water to student dormitories so the pipes would not freeze. Several thousand students were moved to shelters.  In Covington, Ky., just south of Cincinnati, utility wires still bowed with ice Friday.  While most roads were passable, snow was piled high in parking lanes, burying parked cars.  One resident across the street from a post office put small American flags on top of a huge mound of snow that had been plowed into a parking space and left a note: “Thanks, U.S. Postal Service! Signed, Your Neighbor.”  Ian Urbina reported from Washington, and Bob Driehaus from Covington, Ky.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Much of Kentucky Is Still Without Power. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
More than 600,000 Kentucky homes and businesses were still without electricity, and utility officials warned that it might take two weeks before power was restored.