HOUSTON – Randy Calazans is one of the hottest commodities in Texas right now. He’s a plumber.
The winter nightmare that swept the state last week cut power and heating for millions of homes that were never designed for cold temperatures. Across the state, people were evicted from their homes, or returned to find them severely damaged, by pipes, valves and tanks that froze and exploded.
So when the snow started to thaw and the sun wanted again, the plumbers suddenly became like roofs after a hurricane: everyone seemed to need one at once.
At One Call Plumbing, the plumbing business where Mr. Calazans works, employees have been answering the phones nonstop in a small office with extensive Houston maps on the walls. The owner, Edgar Connery, said he has been in the business for almost 40 years and has never seen such a fall after other natural disasters. Some other companies were so overwhelmed that they stopped answering the phone.
Calazans returned to work in the field on Thursday, moving from one customer’s home to another, primarily to assess the damage. Simple problems he fixes right away, if he can. But some houses will need major works, and may even have to be completely redone; those should be left for the next few weeks.
Getting the materials to perform simple tasks is a growing problem, Calazans said: Waiting in line at a supply store can hold him for hours, but when he tried to pick up a few things at the Home Depot, the shelves were bare.
“I am literally burning supplies,” he said.
With energy largely restored and temperatures returning to the 1960s and 1970s, Texans continued to struggle on Sunday with the state’s continuing water crisis. Some reservoirs in the state were filling up again after almost being drained by all the broken water mains, leaking pipes and taps that were left running to prevent freezing.
Austin was still on the alert for boiling water as the pressure gradually returned to normal in his water system, which was interrupted by power outages. Austin Water said in a statement on Sunday that once the pressure was restored, the water would have to be tested before it was considered safe to drink, which could take several days.
Houston restored pressure to its system on Sunday morning and raised the boiling water warning in the afternoon.
The full magnitude of the damage caused by the cold wave is still emerging, but the state already knows that it needs more plumbers in a hurry. Governor Greg Abbott’s office said the state will grant provisional licenses to out-of-state plumbers and exempt taxes and other requirements for plumbers with expired licenses who wish to renew them.
Mr. Calazans, 35, stressed the importance of having repairs carried out by a qualified professional, even after a disaster. He disgusted himself with some of the dubious and unconventional work he had encountered over the years.
“You don’t just want someone doing plumbing,” he said.
He has more experience with the harsh winter than many Texans. He and his wife moved from Long Island to the Houston area last June, looking for a bigger opportunity than they saw in New York’s closed suburbs.
But Calazans did not escape his own damage in Texas: a water pipe broke in his garage, he said, practically flooding the space and damaging his gym equipment.
When he arrived at Jared Coyle’s home in Houston’s Cinco Ranch area around noon on Friday, the wreckage and insulation were in a compact pile near the garage. The pipes burst in the house, damaging several areas, including her daughter’s room and laundry.
For Mr. Coyle, Mr. Calazans represented salvation. The plumber, who visited the house for the first time on Thursday, was returning with more supplies in hand to complete the repair.
“These houses were not built for the cold here and things were not prepared for the extreme cold,” said Coyle, who moved to Houston about 17 years ago. “There is so much you can do before you say, ‘It is what it is, let’s just deal with what happens and move on.’ That’s all you can do. “
After major storms hit Texas, most of the damage is usually concentrated in urban areas like Houston and Dallas, according to Chris Pilcic, a spokesman for Texas-based State Farm Insurance. But this time, he said, it is everywhere.
As of Friday, State Farm had received about 18,900 property claims from customers in Texas, most of them related to frozen and broken water pipes, he said.
“With that, we are listening to customers from across the state,” said Pilcic. “There is no area that has not been affected.”
And it’s not just Texas: more than 2,100 complaints have come from Louisiana, he said, and hundreds more from other states on the path of the storm, like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Lisa Gochman, another Houston resident on the Calazans list for Friday, said the portable flashlights she bought for the hurricane season were useful when last week’s power outage in her two-bedroom apartment – that is, up to one leaking water will collapse part of the ceiling in your guest room, leaving the bed completely covered with rubble.
“It’s a hot mess,” she said. “It is unbearable.”
Leaks also appeared in her bathroom and kitchen, she said, and the condo had no power or water. So she turned to couch surf for shelter, hoping to eventually move to a hotel or a short-term rental.
“I’m trying to go with this,” said Gochman, who has lived in the condo for almost 11 years. “I cried a few times.”
Before arriving at One Call Plumbing, she said, the first time she was able to find a plumber online was on April 22.
After climbing up Gochman’s closet to look at the attic, Calazans said it was possible that there would be even more leaks, but he wouldn’t be able to tell until her water was opened again. It will be necessary to redo the pipe all over the place, he said, at a cost of about $ 10,000.
Mrs. Gochman said that she expected an amount like that, but was not sure how much her insurance would cover.
“This is not even to fix my house,” said Gochman. “I still have to make the carpet, fix the wall. It will probably cost $ 20,000 to $ 30,000 in total. “
Calazans said it is not uncommon to arrive at a job hoping to solve a minor problem, only to find that much more was wrong. It happened in a house in the Bellaire section on Friday afternoon: a burst pipe revealed another, and then more leaks from a pipe wrapped in a plaster column. After all, he couldn’t do it all in one visit; he would have to come back another day.
He said he hoped life would be like this in the coming weeks: a long 10-hour workday after another, full of repairs over repairs over repairs.
“It’s the nature of the business,” he said.
Lucy Tompkins contributed reports.