When the wildfires were raging in the west, we had posts where BJ peeps could check-in and let us know how they were doing and what it was like on the ground.
We have lots of Texas peeps on BJ, and even if you’re not in Texas, many of us have family and friends there. Please use this thread to let us know how it’s going for you and people you care about in Texas. This way we can keep up with how you guys are doing without having to catch any particular BJ thread.
Also, if you are aware of any resources for folks in Texas, please share those in the comments.
As always in terrible times, look for the helpers.
THANK YOU to all who are making calls with us to people across the state of Texas, connecting them with warming centers, shelter, food and water. We’ve just opened another shift starting at 3pm CST, please join us: https://t.co/dEaTI6YxR3
— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) February 18, 2021
Update from last night:
Parfigliano
first?
Another Scott
My SIL is in Austin. She got her power back a couple of days ago, I don’t think she has water yet.
People there should keep an eye on DHS’s DisasterAssistance page.
https://www.disasterassistance.gov/get-assistance/address-lookup?isMap=false
Enter your city and see if it’s registered yet. If not, there are still links and phone numbers to get registered and get more information.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
As a Californian I guess I’m supposed to not like Texas. I’ve never felt that. I can’t stand the state of Texas politics and what has become of the GQP there, but that is a different thing. I know good people who are Texans and enjoy their company. Having said that I could never live in Texas. I’m happily spoiled by California.
taumaturgo
Democrats, are you listening? This is real leadership reaching out directly to the people. Watch what they do, not what they say.
NotMax
Speaking of ICE, if anyone hears/sees anything about the situation in Dolt 45’s concentration camps in Texas, please pass it along.
Immanentize
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Another Scott
Checking in…
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: How about your family in TX?
Firebert
Here in Southeast Austin, the power was out from early Monday morning to Wednesday evening, and it still randomly drops out a couple times a day. Water pressure was nil Wednesday, gradually increased to 50% last night. We’re still under a boil water notice, and I expect that to remain for quite a while. Luckily, we escaped with no broken pipes, best that I can tell.
Next problem to solve is finding groceries. Stores all have very limited hours, bare shelves, and huge lines.
My biggest gripe is my employer. We were notified (via the time clock/payroll phone app, a rant for another day) that they want us working 60 hour weeks for the next two weeks to make up production. We are about as non-essential as a business can get, so I have no idea what they’re thinking.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
Was just thinking of that!
How is your father-in-law doing? And the Immp? (Can’t remember if you have other relatives in Texas.)
SealDeal
Houston BJ Lurker here
Power is back to 99.75% of Centerpoint’s customers according to their Outage tracker, water quality remains to get back to normal. We’ll likely be on boil notice through the weekend, but pressure is coming quickly back up.
My parents (in their mid to late 80’s) and my house never lost power, for which I’m endlessly grateful.
It’s a beautiful day today weather-wise, and should up into the 40’s which will go a long way for final thawing of any pipes that are still frozen, and the subsequent blowouts for those that have not done so already. Not for us, we are good on that front too.
I’m focusing today on thoughts of profound gratitude for our good situation, and sending positive energy out for those that will now be struggling with massive repair bills, flooded homes and putting their lives back together. (Plus I’m donating to local charities).
I’m also taking multiple breaks to shove fucking NAILS into my ERCOT/ABBOTT/CRUZ voodoo doll and pray to all that is unholy that those motherfuckers reap the whirlwind of wrath from my fellow Texans. And Rick Perry?….FUCK YOU MAN.
Longer interview with the smarm bucket after he was escorted through the airport by HPD (because they have nothing else to do right now).
https://abc13.com/ted-cruz-cancun-texas-mexico-weather/10351914/
eclare
Posted downstairs in the dead thread: All passenger flights out of MEM have been cancelled for the foreseeable future due to water issues. I have no idea what this means to FedEx, which is shipping a lot of vaccine.
ChuckInAustin
Lost power in SW Austin on Monday @ 2am, just restored a few hours ago. I fled to my son’s apartment on Wed. when the inside temp was below 40. No water and don’t expect any until Mon or Tues. I’m not sure how the toilet situation is supposed to work between now and then. (hard cheese diet may be my best bet. ;) )
Bright sunshine today and temps above freezing, I’m feeling better today than the previous couple of days.
Texas has been under complete control of Republicans for 25 years but that doesn’t stop them from blaming the liberals. SMH
Brachiator
Still have family in Texas. My brother is boiling water before he can drink it. A niece has temporarily relocated to a hotel because her apartment became unlivable.
Van Buren
@eclare: Sure seems like all those Infrastructure Weeks were a bust.
Patricia Kayden
@Firebert: Are you being allowed to work from home? I assume your roads are still bad.
eclare
@Van Buren: Yep. Here in MEM we are under a boil water advisory, and since snow plows don’t go into residential neighborhoods, I have no idea when I’ll get out.
But I never lost power and so far no burst pipes, so I’m grateful. If my car starts whenever I attempt to get out, I’ll be ecstatic.
lurkypants
@eclare: Shouldn’t affect them; they’re cargo and don’t use the passenger terminals.
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
@kindness: I have family in Texas so the idea of hating all Texans has always struck me as ridiculous. Whether we like it or not, we’re connected to red states and we wish them well. We’re just sorry that their Republican politicians don’t care about them as we’re now seeing in Texas.
SealDeal
eclare
@lurkypants: Yes, I used to work there, but if the airport does not have water, I would assume that also affects FedEx, especially from a fire safety perspective.
Just saw they are shifting operations to other hubs. Indianapolis and Oakland are also good sized.
taumaturgo
Another young, liberal Democrat voice making good, and a very wise effort to counteract the strawmaning from the GQP.
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1362532972885405706
bertintx
Here in north central Austin we’ve had power now going on 24 hours plus about 20 hours from Tuesday to Wednesday. Other friends and family members have been without water and power all week. We have multiple text threads going on where we check in with each other, and share what we can. We’ve been very fortunate to have water and a gas fireplace and range for cooking and heating water.
I am so hoping that enough voting Texans will finally get it that the GQP is not very smart and does not care about providing competent public services. They filter for destructive stupidity and whoever can best rant about God, Guns, Gays, and Genitalia.
jonas
@kindness: If offered the chance to live in Austin or San Antonio, I might take it. I’d hate the summer heat and humidity, but my two favorite things in the world are bbq and Mexican food, so I’d be pretty set.
Ken
As was noted about 11 months ago when the pandemic began, late-stage capitalism under stress ends up looking a lot like the Soviet communism we mocked
To stay someone on topic, I have a sister in the Dallas area, and she hasn’t had power or water outages. No report on what the grocery stores look like.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: and as people are pointing out on twitter: The people who vote for Cruz and Abbott and Cornyn and trump– and even more so, their donors– are the people less likely to be affected by this
Kirk Spencer
Did my long status post last thread but checking in here.
I and mine are doing better than most.
Kineslaw
My parents lost power for a couple of days in Arlington and had to stay with friends. They have frozen pipes leading to two toilets, but that is definitely getting off easy. They are also under a boil water notice.
I lost power for 30 hours in my apartment and am thankful it only got down to 48 before the power came back on and basically stayed on. I lost water for many hours yesterday for my complex to fix a pipe, but I had notice. There is a grocery store across the parking lot and I wonder if it got prioritized after the initial outage. It didn’t have any meat or frozen stuff it could sell initially, but yesterday it had replenished a lot of stock. No lines to enter it either.
Overall, I’m feeling incredibly fortunate. Feels like DFW got hammered enough to cause incredible human suffering, but Austin and Houston got it even worse.
jonas
@Patricia Kayden: Lol! Now *that’s* shade.
VOR
@Van Buren: But maybe this is an opportunity. Texas clearly has some infrastructure needs. I bet other states do too, perhaps not the same as Texas, but similar. What if we propose something to address Texas issues which also covers issues in other states? Use the crisis in Texas as a way to get Rs to come on board.
I know, fantasyland thinking a humanitarian crisis would spur the GQP to do something positive.
TXSwede
Lurker in the Fort Worth suburbs. We never lost power, but half of our neighborhood did, starting from our next door neighbor. Odd.
We are still under a boil alert, but the water is back, and the WiFi was only down for 36 hours, so we were much luckier than many.
We hope that this will open the eyes of our neighbors to the terrible governing philosophy of Texas Republicans, but we are not optimistic.
Squid696
NW Houston here. We have lucked out yet again and avoided the worst of things. We never lost power and just got a “boil water” notice last night, but we still have a pretty good flow of water. The only thing I can think of that saved us is our proximity to a power generating station that managed to stay on-line the whole time. We have some friends staying with us that lost power and water, but many more family members and friends across Texas have been without power and water since Sunday or Monday. Lots of broken water pipes.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Just a quick note to say that in Richmond TX, west of Houston, they got their power back after 60 hours! They were warming themselves and charging phones in their car/truck. No burst pipes, no boil order (yet — wait until the Houston waste releases get going when it warms up with rain). Funny story, my BiL said my FiL, who is frail and so thin from cancer treatments, had closed himself into their “office” room, had two space heaters going in addition to house heat, was sitting in his underwear in that 80° room, living his best life.
Immp is fine. Took two days to recover from his first jab. But Rice has power and water — likely due to the Rice Medical Center. No classes is his bonus.
Josie
I checked in during the last open thread. The maintenance man is here to patch the pipe in the attic, and we are starting to get a little water pressure. Baby steps.
Karen H
San Antonio here.
Our power has stayed on the entire time. We live 5 blocks from the central command station for the San Antonio Fire Department /EMS and I think we are benefiting from that proximity for which we are extremely grateful.
Water is back to almost normal pressure and I’m going to enjoy a shower today for the first time in I can’t remember how many days. Still under the boil water notice for drinking and cooking.
Road conditions look good and the sun is out. It’s expected to be very cold again tonight but no precipitation so I think we’re on our way out of this. I hope the supply chain will recover now so there will be better access to food.
I feel so fortunate and maybe a little surviver’s guilt, that this whole episode has been merely an inconvenience for our household when so many are truly suffering.
Ken
Did the neighbors react in the way we’ve all come to expect?
Firebert
@Patricia Kayden: It’s manufacturing, so no working from home. It’s also a few miles out of town down some notoriously undermaintained road.
Immanentize
@Karen H: I’m sure you’ve considered this, but showering when there is a boil water order — especially because that order is because of waste processing plant overflow — is not the best idea? Boil water, take a bath?
ETA I really miss San Antonio. I lived in King William.
Salty Sam
Our kids and granddaughter in east Austin were extremely lucky- their home is not far from, and power supplied from the same electrical substation as, a city water treatment facility and thus never lost power. They have a very close community of friends living in adjacent homes (they’ve knocked down all the fences between their houses and named it “The Compound”), and they all have plenty of food and supplies to withstand emergencies like this. Young hippies, they make me so proud!
My SIL only a few miles away lost power over the weekend. It was restored on Wednesday. She braved it out with multiple layers of winter clothing and piled on the blankets to stay in her 45 degree house (she’s an aspiring Crazy Cat Lady, and could not leave her feline family to fend for themselves). I have several other friends in Austin and Houston whose experience was similar.
So for friends and family of the Salty one, it hasn’t been too bad. But there are plenty of others who have been/ARE suffering greatly. The contrast between Beto doing the Lord’s work and Cruz <spit> flying off to Cancun warms my heart.*
* I’ve read plenty of conservatives defending Cruz’s trip, saying “really, what can one man do?, let the professionals do their job to restore power and stay out of their way!” I give them a six word reply- “Watch Beto, and go fuck yourself.”
Uncle Cosmo
@Immanentize: I ginned this up back in the 80s when there was some buzz that life on Earth might have originated in the interstices of clay minerals rather than in tidal pools or oceans:
Immanentize
@Salty Sam: AOC, not a Texan, helped raise a million dollars in a couple of days to help Texas. It’s the Black Panther model — help communities, accumulate support and power.
Immanentize
@Uncle Cosmo: nice!
oldster
@Uncle Cosmo:
That’s really good!
BruceFromOhio
@taumaturgo: The best revenge on your detractors is living (and doing) well.
Texans are Americans, just like the rest of us. The repeated mockery of the fascists assholes running shit into the ground continues apace.
Salty Sam
@Immanentize: Yup! I intended to include her in my comment, but I was too eager to get to the part where I tell conservatives to go fuck themselves…
Karen H
@Immanentize: Thanks for the warning. I think it’s safe to shower because the notification is precautionary due to low water pressure and no contaminants have been detected.
We love living in San Antonio. We’re in Dignowity Hill which may not have been a thing when you were here. On the Eastside near downtown.
J R in WV
Our power here in West Virginia has been off since bedtime Last Sunday. Whole house generator set appears to be working fine, but won’t power the well which is too far away from the house, 800 horizontal feet. Also our internet connection is via a sat dish at next door neighbor’s up on the ridge and a LAN/server center up there, so just came back yesterday evening when we got my portable generator running for the first time in years.
We leave home soon to go to the county seat, we have an appointment to get our first covid-19 vaccinations, if the weather hasn’t interfered with delivery of vials, staff mobility. Phones appear to be out in the county seat, so just going to go on the chance things are running smmoothly at the Primary Care Center there
Wish us luck. Best of luck to the TX jackals. My RWNJ brother north of San Antonio was out of power when we talked last, I’m sure he blames that on AOC in NYC…
BruceFromOhio
I follow a group of creative folk in Austin, and have family in Houston. Shit is dire in both places. The Austin crew got their power back for now, but have been warned it may go out again with more cold weather imminent. The bigger concerns are food and water. There is literally no food, and restaurants providing free meals are only going to bridge the gap for a few days at most. With so much plumbing damaged in the earlier freezes, access to clean water for drinking and cooking and ANY water to flush the toilets poses a huge public health risk.
The Houston crews are better, but still have the same problems. My cousin lives on a farm near Katy, TX, and kept power throughout. She has a well that did not freeze, and has been supplying her neighbors with water for the farm animals. My sister & her family, and my aunt and uncle live closer in to the city, as well as some old friends of MrsFromOhio, and the food & water are the biggest concerns. For the moment, everyone is okay, but that won’t last long if stores don’t get restocked or emergency supplies are not made available.
If I could pack semi-trucks with water, bags of rice, beans, dry pasta, and as many thousands of feet of PVC pipe that could fit, I’d be rolling them now. The freeze will pass, but the basic needs for food, water and plumbing repair are chronic and increasing.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: What a great image!
Josie
@BruceFromOhio:
Food is going to be more and more a problem. We are getting a trickle of water now and can boil it with power, but food is harder to come by.
Also, supplies for repairs. My landlord said that the shelves at Lowe’s and Home Depot are cleaned out of plumbing repair stuff.
trollhattan
@BruceFromOhio:
I’ve heard lots of anecdotes about “leaving the water running slowly” to prevent freezing pipes but it seemed to me that with temps plunging so far below freezing, the only safe thing to do would be draining them, especially with the goofy “pipes in attic” designs.
The backlog for plumbers will be months and months.
Immanentize
@Salty Sam: I share your eagerness!
Immanentize
@Karen H: That was definitely not a thing. In between Monte Vista and downtown?
I taught at St. Mary’s.
Rileys Enabler
Sugar Land area here. Power is on now; we lost it late Sunday and were out until Wednesday afternoon, with a couple of fluctuations. Those were the two coldest nights of my life and it was deeply miserable. The fur babies are all fine but stunned and grateful for the warmth of the heater. We also lost water for a day but that’s back on and somehow I managed to miss the scourge of busted pipes (knock wood). We are still conserving energy and water; if we like if we use it we might lose it. Gas stations are hit or miss but the Kid managed to fill up yesterday at 6:00 am so today we will try to find groceries. I lost everything in the fridge and freezer (temps dropped to 16 but got back up over freezing during the day so everything I had outside thawed…froze…thawed…froze..no thanks). Living on pantry supplies and baking bread for now. Grocery stores are mostly bare but I hope trucks will start delivering today since our roads are clear. I’ve never voted for a Repug and hope they are all given a thrashing going forward. This was a preventable, greed-fueled disaster and it cost lives.
For Christmas I want a battery-powered heated toilet seat. I would run that puppy 24/7. Ha!
Hope the other Texans are digging out and feeling the warmth of sunshine today. One more freeze to go tonight and then we are clear.
L85NJGT
@VOR:
Obama hammered away for eight years on smart grid enhancements and achieved modest results, largely because the fossil fuel industry took a hard line on anything green.
It’s a conflict between the coal and nuclear generators tied to an outdated generation & transmission model, with an ever increasing cost structure, and utility customers who don’t want to pay the delta from being tied to outdated technology.
So GOPers in energy states get stuck between selling a free market, low cost fantasyland to voters, and their smokestack donors needing significant regulatory input to be cost competitive against renewables.
BruceFromOhio
Just got an update from SisterInTexas, near South Houston – the local Walmart has been picked clean, there is NO FOOD. Roads are still dangerous due to icing, almost everything is an overpass in and around the city. She’s got canned goods and a working freezer, so they’ll be okay for now. Once the roads clear and the trucks roll, things will improve – as evil as that empire is, no one does logistics like Walmart.
Between now and then, shit’s gonna get even more dire. If you can, please find a way to donate through a trusted resource.
L85NJGT
@trollhattan:
Slab construction in Texas so there is no basement or first floor joists to put pipes.
TXSwede
@Ken: Our local leaders are anti-mask, anti-tax, anti-government service, Republicans.
They are taking credit for things that went well, and pretending nothing went badly.
If that is what you have come to expect, then yes. But no cannibalism, yet.
BruceFromOhio
@trollhattan:
Worse, price gouging is notorious, the soulless ratfuck criminals (the real ones, not just the leadership) have a lot of practice from floods and hurricanes.
Ken
@L85NJGT: Texas has the most tornados per year of any state (admittedly area plays a large part in that). What do they do for tornado shelters? I should ask my sister, now that I think of it her house has no basement.
pamelabrown53
Check in from El Paso. Nothing bad happened here. Had to let the faucets drip for a couple of days is all.
Always thought El Paso should secede to New Mexico; we have more in common.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BruceFromOhio: and I imagine there’s already a backlog in orders given the recent construction boom. I heard a blurb on Marketplace that lumber prices have doubled in the last six months.
kindness
From everything I’ve read it seems as if Texas’ biggest issue with really cold weather is they don’t bury their pipes in Texas or if they do they don’t bury them deep enough to keep the stuff in the pipes from freezing. Understanding that Texas is a low tax/low services state I don’t expect the government there to mandate simple (but expensive) stuff like burying pipes deeper. As a non-Texan I don’t really have any say in the matter. Seems to me there is a balance between buying things cheap and buying things that are high quality and will last. The leaders/Corporate heads in Texas doesn’t look at it like that though. Cheap is always their only option. Short term profits are more important than long term use/growth. I don’t get it but I’ve always lived where we don’t have the option not to have to winterize everything, so I take that view for granted. Guess I shouldn’t.
Subsole
@jonas: It’s Texas. You can get barbecue and tacos LITERALLY everywhere. No need to limit your options. :)
RedDirtGirl
@SealDeal: Thanks for de-lurking to let us know how you are doing!
Karen H
@Immanentize: South of Ft Sam(across 35), North of the Alamodome, East of 281/37
Subsole
Doin’ ok up in DFW.
Still under boil notice, but didn’t lose power. I think every neighborhood around us did. Lost internet the first couple days and it’s been spotty the rest, but the pipes are fine and that seems to be the limit of the damage.
My folks in Waco didn’t get off quite so light. There were outages there, but they have power again and are ok now.
Looks like we made it through. No idea what the roads and stores are like. Living on pho w/cayenne pepper right now.
Halteclere
I’m in Dallas. Monday and Tuesday was roughly on a 2-hour on, 6-hour off power schedule. We would charge our laptops, phones, and battery packs as much as possible so we cold continue to work when the power went out again (deadlines never go away!). Power has been solid since Wednesday. We recently renovated our house so our insulation was good, and inside temperatures never got below 50F. We have a gas fireplace and gas range so could sip hot chocolate in front of the fire to stay warm.
I was only worried about outside faucets and the pool equipment freezing. Use of buckets over the faucets with light bulbs inside seemed to have prevented them from freezing enough to cause damage. I put a couple heavy tarps over the pool equipment and used a camp propane heater to keep the pool equipment from completely freezing. I had to pour hot water on some of the pool pipes to get them to flow when power would come back on. (In Texas we don’t winterize our pools, we rely on the pool pumps to automatically kick on and circulate water when temperatures approach freezing.)
Yesterday morning I passed an alley nearby that was covered with ice/water as far up as I could see. I’m guessing that either the main line to a house broke, or pool piping broke and the pool pump was emptying out the pool when power returned. A neighbor said yesterday that they heard a “pop” under their pier-and-beam house and then the sound of running water. Today, when the temperatures get to the upper ’30’s everyone will know how well their piping survived.
Subsole
@Kineslaw:
Yeah. Maybe it’s me, but it feels like the damage here was really unevenly distributed.
Eunicecycle
My son lives in North Austin, almost in Round Rock, and they only lost power for a few hours and always had water. Lucky! I have a friend whose adult son in Houston needed emergency surgery last night and was having trouble finding a hospital to take him. She was staying with her grandsons at their house with electricity but no water. It’s so hard to believe this is happening in our country.
Subsole
@Uncle Cosmo:
Very pretty.
Subsole
@J R in WV: Good luck. Hope you get your shot!
Subsole
@BruceFromOhio:
This. Our entire state just got hit with a hurricane, essentially.
And you know Abbott ain’t gonna do a thing.
Subsole
@Ken: Bathtub, mattress, Deus vult and Dex aie, my man.
Punchy
This is all caused by the green-colored windy mills freezing together and not releasing gas for Texas patriots. Or so Im told.
Subsole
@pamelabrown53: Please help us put some Democrats in charge first. Y’know, for neighborliness’ sake?
Subsole
@kindness: I really, really miss living in a country that knew how to think past the next quarterly report…
BruceFromOhio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Texas is facing an expensive confluence of events. If only we could find ways to turn the recycling waste streams into usable building materials …
pamelabrown53
@Subsole: I do help. Very committed to Texas. Just saying El Paso seems a more natural fit with New Mexico.
Geminid
@pamelabrown53: Glad to hear you are OK. It is too bad you don’t have Michelle Lujan-Griffen as your Governor. But at least you have a good Congresswoman. Representative Veronica Escobar seems first rate.
Subsole
@pamelabrown53: Yeah. My tongue was firmly in my cheek there.
El Paso is definitely its own thing. Always liked visiting. Felt a little more…open, I guess? …than New Mexico, tbh.
burnspbesq
In Cedar Park (northwest suburban Austin), we have been incredibly fortunate. No issues with water. Pedernales Electric Cooperative did a masterful job of load management: we were basically two hours on, two hours off from late Sunday night until dinner time on Wednesday, and no interruptions since then. Wonder what their corporate structure (no shareholders) had to do with that.
We even got our plumber out here yesterday to fix the leak in the supply line to the hose outlet in the back of the house. There are advantages to paying the plumber’s kids’ college tuition; they show up when you need them.
‘We missed this week’s trash pickup. The city says pickup will resume on normal schedule on Monday, with recycling pickup deferred for an additional week. We’ll manage.
Will probably test the driving conditions later today. Supermarkets are on reduced hours and I don’t expect to find much until at least Sunday. No curbside or delivery until further notice, so I will be busting out the KN95 mask for my first trip to HEB in ten months (Trader Joe’s is still off limits).
Gravenstone
@taumaturgo: Um, you’re ragging on the wrong party there shit for brains. Like usual…
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: We used to own a small cabin in the mountains in SoCal. Every time we left we drained the pipes by opening the taps inside and shutting off the main water valve. Leaving it on and dripping, I never heard of that preventing frozen pipes.
Some people used to pour a little gasoline into the toilets at their cabins but we never did.
tokyokie
We live in Fort Worth. Our power went off and stayed off for quite some time around 3:15 a.m. Monday morning. (We did have a 15-minute outage that I assume was a rolling blackout the hour before it went out long term.) We stayed in the house for a couple of days, but after two nights of wearing parkas around the house, we decided we’d had enough. We had a hotel reservation for Tuesday night, but the hotel called as we were packing the car to cancel the reservation because it had lost power and water. But the spousal unit, who’s from the Philippines, networked with the Filipino community down in Keene (about 20 minutes south of Fort Worth) and found a house whose owner, a friend of the spousal unit, was in Florida, and we stayed there for a couple of nights. Power was restored Wednesday afternoon, as near as we can tell (the spousal unit stopped by the house on her way to work the night shift at the hospital), but because I didn’t have a car in Keene, we weren’t able to move back to our house until after she got off work Thursday morning. And Marvin and Franco, our two meezers, seem to be just as crazy as we’re accustomed.
We never had a water problem. Our house was built in 1960, back when home builders were burying water pipes and putting the studs closer together, so the water never went out and we don’t seem to have any broken pipes. And the boil water notice for Fort Worth and environs only affected the northern part of the city and the northern suburbs, and we live on the southern edge of town. The freeways are clear, but the surface roads are a bit of a mess, but the temperature’s in the mid-30s now and no more precipitation is expected. It’s supposed to drop below freezing again tonight, but get up to 50 Saturday, so things are about back to normal.
In a little bit, I’m going to venture out and check food supplies at Central Market and pick up some Mucinex for the minor chest cold I’ve contracted. Still waiting for when my appointment to get the second Covid shot will be; I’m guessing it’ll be next week.
CatFacts
Checked in on the friends in Louisiana, who got a little less snow than many of the Texas folks but had to deal with the same cold. They’re fine. One more night of hard freeze to go and some ice, but the power and water infrastructure held up so far.
Having lived in south Louisiana, I can confidently say the housing infrastructure is NOT built for prolonged cold. If the house power goes out, the plumbing is at real risk. Insulation isn’t great. Water lines aren’t buried very deeply. Water pipes are often routed through the attic if the house is built on slab, or exposed under the house if it’s up on piers. Don’t even think about a basement! The water table is much too high for that, and I imagine the same in Houston.
Snowplows are unheard of, and salt/sand for roads is not kept in stock because ice storms only happen once or twice a decade. When a winter storm hits, local governments contract with building companies or salt mines for a few loads that can treat the bridges on main roads. The rest just has to melt off. This type of event stresses the infrastructure there just as much as Hurricane Sandy walloped the northeast.
None of this excuses the kind of infrastructure problems Texas had. Or the lack of preparation in places like Dallas, which are known to get much colder than on the Gulf Coast.
Martin
SoCal/FL peeps. Learn from this. Add this scenario to your earthquake/hurricane prep. Buy a 2nd propane tank if you have a grill. Have some plastic sheeting and some rolls of tape. Have something you can heat and bring inside your house – clay bricks are good. Put them to some decorative use for now.
It’s a lot harder for SoCal/FL to get a cold snap like this due to bodies of water to our west, but sometimes the stars align. SoCal has the added risk of an earthquake taking infrastructure offline during a normal cold spell, leading to a similar outcome.
wizened_guy
I asked my SIL how her folks in Texas were holding up:
“…of course my dad told me it’s Obama’s fault, so, yeah, they’re doing just fine.”
That’s Texas.
Martin
@opiejeanne: No, leaving it on can work. Basically you are using the residual heat in the water from the underground pipes to keep the house pipes thawed and then disposing of that water and replacing it before it can freeze.
But yeah, if it gets cold enough, there may not be enough heat left in the underground pipes to achieve that. But if it’s near freezing it works well.
Jay
Anne put out a call a couple of days ago. MGMT agreed.
So we stripped out our plumbing isle. 18 Semi loads headed south. Will be there in 4 days.
Dick’s Lumber and Milano Plumbing joined in.
Halteclere
@Martin: And moving water takes longer to freeze than stationary water.
opiejeanne
@Martin: California has standards for winterized utilities, even SoCal beach towns. Things like how deep the water and sewer lines are buried, built-in precautions to keep water treatment plants (sewage) online, and requiring fire hydrants that will not freeze in conditions like these.
mr opiejeanne is a Civil Engineer, registered in CA but now retired, and he had salesmen who tried to push their hydrants that were cheaper. One customer of the shop realized Dave was my husband and gave me his business card and urged me to urge Dave to talk to him. Dave laughed and tossed the card in the trash. “I know that product, it’s cheaper because it’s lighter weight and the wrong gauge to fit the city’s system. Just guessing, but it probably would have frozen as well. He was supporting himself very well selling them to communities without such stringent requirements in place, probably Texas.
opiejeanne
@Martin: Ok, I get that, but maybe not in the mountains. And since we weren’t living there full-time in the winter, leaving the tap running even a little would have been a terrible waste of water in a place where it’s already too dry.
Martin
@Halteclere: Yeah, the movement itself is a form of energy. It takes a LOT of energy to induce the phase change. Pushing water across the boiling point takes 7x as much energy as raising it from room temperature to just below a boil. Freezing water take about 4x as much energy as to bring it down from room temperature to just above freezing.
So even if the water is at 0C (32F), so long as you can move it fast enough and then dispose of it (out the faucet) it’ll be able to keep adding energy to the pipe to counter the subfreezing temps.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Oh yeah, you’d never do that. But if you were there and lost heat temporarily, it’d work fine.
The downside to draining the pipes is getting water hammering when you refill them which can damage the pipes as well. So for a short period of time just dripping the faucet will do the trick just fine.
You have a built in sensor on how much to run out of the faucet as well – if it starts to freeze off the tip of the faucet, you need to run more water.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Yeah, CA generally takes this stuff seriously. I think we learned in the 60s and 70s growth period that doing less but doing it better was preferable to doing more but doing it half-assed.
Not many places have had to go through growth periods that outstripped the construction industry and forced rethinking how things should be built.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@CatFacts: I just saw in the WA Post an article about LA and apparently FEMA officials who are still embedded in the Governor’s office (!) working on recovering from hurricane damage were right there and ready to go to work on power/water problems. LA has been through some shit.
BruceFromOhio
@Jay: You guys are AWESOME!! Well done, sir, well done!
Leumas
Have a number of friends/family in Texas ( I live North of the Red River). Power seems to be mostly, but
not completely, back on. The issue now is potable water. Municipal water systems seem not yet to have come back on line. On a different note, Oklahoma was also in the disaster declaration. Not sure what that was about, unless our governor sees a way to grift it. State wide, we had localized issues, but overall
everything seems to be working normally.
Ben Cisco
Just heard from my BIL in Killeen. He’s got power and water so doing OK.
Ben Cisco
@taumaturgo: She’s doing work, and good on her for that.
Frank McCormick
It’s been a long week here in Austin. We got perhaps six inches of snow on Sunday night and stayed below freezing until today. The power went out Monday at 2:00 AM and reliably returned yesterday at 4:44 AM. We did get three hour breaks each on Monday and Tuesday that allowed us to reheat the house and recharge electronics. Roads were treacherous to impassable all week (Austin is at the edge of “Hill Country” and we need to go up some pretty steep banks to get out of our complex.) Having gone through 30+ winters in Chicago, the record cold and snow (for Austin) was all too familiar. But I’d never had to endure multiple days with no electricity before (and my home is all electric).
But we made it through it all already. We now have reliable electric and water, although a boil ban is still in effect until all the broken mains and pipes are repaired. My partner was able to go back to work today and our main issue going forward will be shopping as all our supplies have been exhausted. Grocery stores re-opened yesterday, but lines were long and shelves were bare. I’m hoping that deliveries are resuming even as I type and that normality will slowly return tomorrow with no freezing temperatures in the foreseeable future.
kitfoxer
College Station TX jackal here. We got the whole treatment in the south of town. No power, then rolling blackouts to no water, then the water came back on but once the power was stable enough to completely warm the house that’s when the valve on the water heater burst, so yay, rain in my closet. No water again since we shut the valve to the house. Getting a plumber soon is a joke. At least we are fortunate enough to have power, plenty of food and some bottled water, and snow melt off the roof for the toilets. Counting myself lucky and hoping like hell that we can get everyone back on their feet ASAP.
WayneL140
Another long-time-listener here in Bryan-College Station. Lots of people had problems, including my 84 year old mother, but I faired pretty well. The only problem I had was my car froze up. My car can use Flex/Fuel and I found out E-85 fuel doesn’t like cold temperatures. I don’t get it; they grow this shit up in Iowa. After towing to the garage and thawing it, it’s running okay again.
We Democrats understand everyone’s criticism of Texas. We live here. We know. There just isn’t anything we can do about it because most Texans have been convinced that government is bad, and Texas is the last refuge for scoundrels. We’ll just keep voting them out, and hope someday we’ll be on the right side again.
Tehanu
I have a lot of relatives in Texas who basically have ignored me for years. The last time I saw them, at my grandmother’s 100th birthday celebration, they acted warm, friendly and welcoming, but every effort I made to contact them afterwards was ignored. So screw ’em. The only exceptions are, first, my uncle’s widow in El Paso, with whom I’ve kept up correspondence for many years, and since El Paso isn’t suffering the same problems as the rest of the state I know she’s all right. And second, my 2nd cousin & his family (from the other side of my family — not related to the rest of the Texas relatives) who moved to Houston a couple of years back. Them, I worry about.