Two days before the storm began, Houston’s chief elected official warned her constituents to prepare as they would for a major hurricane. Many took heed: Texans who could stock up on food and water, while nonprofits and government agencies set out to help those who couldn’t.
But few foresaw the fiasco that was to come.
As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas’ power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. Tens of millions huddled in frigid homes that slowly grew colder or fled for safety. And a prideful state, long suspicious of regulation and outside help, was left to seek aid from other states and humanitarian groups as many of its 29 million people grasped for survival.
At one hospital, workers stood outside to collect rainwater. Others stood in line at a running tap in a park. A mother of three took her children to shelter in a furniture store after she could see her breath forming in the family’s trailer. University professors fundraised so their students could afford meals.
Images of desperate Texans circulated worldwide. To some, they evoked comparisons to a less wealthy or self-regarding place. To others, they laid bare problems that have long festered.
The state’s Republican leadership was blamed for ignoring warnings that winter could wreak the havoc that it did, and for not providing local officials with enough information to protect residents now. A lack of regulations to protect critical infrastructure and failure by officials to take recommended steps to winterize equipment left the nation’s largest energy-producing state unprepared for last week’s weather emergency.
A week after she warned her county’s nearly 5 million residents about the impending storm, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was sleeping on an air mattress at the county’s emergency operations center. Her home was without power for three nights.
“It’s worth asking the question: Who set up this system and who perpetuated it knowing that the right regulation was not in place?” Hidalgo said. “Those questions are going to have to be asked and I hope that changes will come. The community deserves answers.”
Around 2 a.m. Monday, the full measure of the crisis Texas faced began to be apparent.
Cold and ice had set in the day before, leading to spreading power outages across the state. But standing in the emergency operations center early Monday, Hidalgo and others learned that their local energy provider, CenterPoint Energy, would not be able to “roll” outages between homes as they had been told earlier.
Instead of short intervals of heat, enough to keep their homes safe, residents would have to go without for days on end.
Most people did not yet know that Texas’ power grid had been on the brink of total failure. That revelation would come three days later.
Power outages spiraled through the day Monday, ultimately cutting off more than 4 million people. Grocery stores shut down, and hotel rates skyrocketed.
People who fled to the homes of relatives or neighbors had to consider the risks of contracting or spreading the coronavirus.
Ashley Archer and her husband decided to take in his best friend at their suburban Dallas home. She is pregnant and has been trying to protect herself from the virus for nearly a year.
The friend is “like family,” she said. “We weren’t going to let him freeze at his place.”
Things got worse Tuesday. Thousands of people sought refuge from their freezing homes in warming shelters. Others sat in their cars; hundreds were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning. A woman and her young daughter died after running their car inside a garage. An 11-year-old boy was found dead after his family’s mobile home lost power.
In suburban Houston, Tina Rios could see her breath inside the trailer she shares with her husband and three children, ages 3, 9, and 10. She started “stressing really hard.” Her refuge was a Gallery Furniture store opened to a desperate public by a well-known Houston businessman, Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale.
At her Dallas condominium, 51-year-old Stephanie Murdoch layered in blankets, two pairs of pants, two sweaters, three pairs of socks, a hat, and gloves. Her anger grew at the power companies and their apparent lack of preparation.
“We’ve got another blast of snow coming in this evening ... and still no clear answers as to why the grids aren’t working better,” she said.
By Wednesday, some started to get their power back, but a new shortage emerged -- drinkable water
