HOUSTON – When Henry Nguyen reopened his beauty salon in southwest Houston, half a dozen neighbors came running – not to cut their hair, but to wash their hair. They had spent days without running water at home.
The winter cold that cut off power and water in much of America’s fourth largest city forced Mr. Nguyen to close his salon for four days as he struggled to protect his water pipes at home, struggled with a lifeless generator and sent his three children to a friend’s house to escape the relentless cold. In the three decades since his arrival from Vietnam, Nguyen has only been concerned with the heat and hurricanes in Houston.
“I was not afraid of winter, but now I know,” said Nguyen. “The ice storm brought the entire state down.”
The hairdresser was among the many residents and business owners who emerged on Saturday to assess the damage and begin to return to their normal routines after the most violent winter storm that hit the city in decades. About 4 million customers were left without power throughout Texas during the worst of the storm last week. On Saturday, that number dropped to less than 50,000, according to data from PowerOutage.US. Access to safe drinking water remained a critical problem for millions of people in the state, after low temperatures caused pipes to break and cities, including Houston, were placed under boiling water warnings.
Mr. Nguyen was cutting his hair again as cars raced along the icy roads. The weather was warmer. Pedestrian traffic has reappeared along the main thoroughfare in Sharpstown, the diverse neighborhood where Hair By Henry opened 19 years ago.