Anger over the Texas power grid in the face of a record winter freeze is mounting, while millions of residents remained shaking, with no guarantee that their electricity and heating – off for 36 hours or more in many homes – would return soon, or they would remain. when it finally happens.
“I know people are angry and frustrated,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who woke up to more than 1 million people still without power in his city. “Me too.”
Between 2 and 3 million customers in Texas still lacked power, almost two full days after the historic snowfall and single-digit temperatures created an increase in demand for electricity to heat homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, affecting the grid state electricity and causing blackouts to spread.
The winter, which overwhelmed energy networks unprepared for climate change and left millions of people without electricity in a record cold, maintained its hold on the middle of the country on Wednesday.
At least 20 people died across the country, some of them struggling to find heat inside their homes. In the Houston area, a family died of carbon monoxide from a car exhaust in their garage; another died after the flames spread from his fireplace.
Some blame the polar vortex, a weather pattern that generally remains in the Arctic, but is increasingly visiting lower latitudes and staying beyond what is welcome. Scientists say that global warming caused by humans may be partly responsible for making their escapes to the south longer and more frequent.
More than 100 million people live in areas covered Wednesday by some type of winter weather alert, warning or warning, while another winter storm strikes Texas and parts of the southern plains, the National Weather Service said.
Utilities from Minnesota to Texas and Mississippi have implemented continuous blackouts to lighten the load on power grids that struggle to meet the extreme demand for heat and electricity, as record low temperatures have been reported city after city.
The weather also threatened to affect the country’s Covid-19 vaccination effort. Joe Biden’s management said delays in shipping and vaccine deliveries are likely. After visiting Milwaukee on Tuesday, Biden said the weather was “cold as hell up there.”
The worst power outages in the United States, by far, were in Texas, where authorities requested 60 generators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and planned to prioritize hospitals and nursing homes. The state has opened 35 shelters for more than 1,000 occupants, the agency said.
The collapse sparked outrage and growing demands for answers about how Texas, whose Republican leaders last year insulted California because of its continuing blackouts, failed to test so massive an important point in the state’s pride: energy independence.
Amber Nichols, whose home north of Austin has been without power since Monday, said: “We are all angry because there is no reason to let entire neighborhoods freeze to death.”
Travel remains ill-advised in much of the country, with treacherous roads and thousands of canceled flights. Some of the fatalities involve people dying in their cars in sub-zero temperatures. Many school systems have delayed or canceled face-to-face classes.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott called for an investigation by the network manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. His outrage took on a very different tone than just the day before, when he told the Texans that Ecrot was prioritizing residential customers and that power was being restored in hundreds of thousands of homes.
“This is unacceptable,” said Abbott.
Authorities said a fire that killed three young children and their grandmother in the Houston area probably spread through the fireplace they used to keep warm. In Oregon, authorities confirmed on Tuesday that four people died in the Portland area from carbon monoxide poisoning.
At least 13 children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth and one parent died of toxic fumes, hospital officials said.