I heard a comment that if the anger and frustration of Texans could be harnessed to generate power the entire state would be lit up like the Vegas Strip… which is an interesting mind picture.
Texans stay safe. I hope things are better soon.
I wonder if ERCOT is expecting a pat on the back and a hearty “thank you” from the citizens of their state for saving them. 
And tonight the utility company issued a boil water alert. That has never happened as far as I remember. At least I have running water and the ability to boil it but that’s kind of scary. It’s in effect until Monday and they said when the main lines start to thaw, things will probably get worse before they get better. (This is Tennessee, not Texas, by the way.)
You probably know this, but as a reminder… if you haven’t already, set aside containers of water just in case you lose service temporarily.
You protect against probability. Could Miami building codes protect against earthquakes? Why, and at what cost? If you lived in Houston, would you have spent a few thousand buying snow tires for the past 20 years?
Apparently, Texas gets winter storms about every 10 years.
Guarding against a once a decade catastrophe for government and public utilities is entirely reasonable. In fact, Texas was told to do exactly that ten years ago.
And, hell, I live near Chicago and don’t bother buying snow tires - because the local government has a plan for keep roads clear. People in Houston don’t need snow tires. They do need a government that can keep the lights on/water flowing. Mentioning snow tires is a diversion.
The technology exists to winterize power production. It is used routinely in colder climates
Texas utilities were told ten years ago to winterize. They didn’t. Because that might eat into profits.
This is a preventable disaster triggered by greed and a lack of empathy.
Not just cold climates.
Surrounding states, for example Louisiana, which also don’t typically see weather like this, aren’t having the same issues. And that’s because they are required to winterize. They are having outages and rolling blackouts but not nearly on the scale of Texas. Everything, including failure, is bigger down here.
This isn’t a once in a century event that nobody could reasonably predict or prevent. Not at all.
And not just in cold weather. We routinely have rolling blackouts and sometimes flat out outages in summer due to high heat. For reasons of “efficiency”, i.e. being as cheap as possible, our system doesn’t handle high heat particularly well either. Ironic, since hot summers are easily predictable in Texas.
I feel like it’s always worth adding: your bathtub is an excellent container for spare water in this kind of emergency.
I save and store dozens of empty large juice and soft drink bottles, and I break them out and fill them with water whenever a major storm is forecast.
Then when nothing happens, I empty them and put them back. But it might pay off someday.
I’m a bit loath to get angry at the water utilities; from everything I’ve read, they’re facing pressure issues due to so many people dripping pipes and having broken pipes. When the pressure gets too low, they can’t guarantee the microbiological safety of the water, and issue boil orders. It’s not a question of winterization or power availability from what I gather. And FWIW, Dallas water is and has been stable, with no boil orders or anything like that. That might be winterization, might be redundancy, or might be luck- I don’t know.
The Texas independent electrical system, from what I have read, means they cannot easily borrow electricity from other areas during crises. No one expects a desert municipality to buy snow plows. But they still need warming centres and sand and salt. You can always be better prepared. You have to try to learn the lessons one can.
Has there been any call for help to the military or Northern States? One of the best things about the US is a sense of community. Or used to be…
ERCOT, the Energy Reliability Council of Texas.
Has anyone else taken to mentally inserting “ironically named” into every occurance of that name that crosses awareness?
Yep. Or at least have contingency mitigation measures in place.
And check them out and test them once in a while; don’t wait for the disaster to find out everything’s moth-eaten/rusted and seized, or the guy who knew how to do it retired years ago.
FEMA and National Guard units have been on the ground pretty much through the whole thing. Mostly to provide meals, water, blankets, emergency backup generators in some places, etc.
And while those are well and good, the main issue was the loss of power, which they couldn’t do much about. After hurricanes, rescue, food, and temporary shelter are critical but much less so for what we just went through which saw people mostly have food and housing but lacking heat.
It depends. What would the ramifications be if I lived in Houston and didn’t buy snow tires? Maybe once every ten years I’d be stuck in a brightly lit well-heated house with a full pantry for a week? Sure, that’s a reasonable risk to take.
But if you were in a situation where your life was literally at risk once every ten years because you didn’t have snow tires, I bet you’d make sure you had them.
You’re correct, I don’t see much blame on the water utilities. But if they power had stayed on, while there still would have been some burst pipes there probably wouldn’t have been as many. Everyone losing power and heat just made the situation that much worse.
Oh, absolutely. I think had the power stayed on, it would have been something of a breathless news item for local outlets, and a sort of curious fact for the national news to report, as one night had the second coldest temperature recorded in DFW, for example.
But with power, most everyone would have been warm and most pipes wouldn’t have broken. I’m sure some would have, but not all. And any dripping faucet pressure issues would have resolved when people just shut their taps off.
Right.
And even if a water main broke (and I heard something about hundreds of such breaks) then even if people had to melt snow or boil their water the fact they had power to heat things on a stove, or in a microwave, or electric kettle, or on a hot plate would have made a major, major difference.
I’ve heard a different take on the ‘why’ for boiling water:
Many residents across North Texas are under orders from their cities to boil or conserve water after this week’s record-setting low temperatures froze equipment and caused power outages that knocked treatment and pumping facilities offline.
…
I’ve heard/seen that in a few other places, too.
The current disaster in TX is akin to a plane crash: low probability, high consequence. You take reasonable measures to protect against such things.
If they dig down deep enough, and can create an honest post mortem of what happened, I think they’ll find that this was preventable in an economically viable way.
Just a hunch …