SAN ANTONIO – A relentless winter storm continued to hit Texas on Tuesday, while record lows left millions of people without power.
According to the National Weather Service, extremely low temperatures not seen for more than 100 years have been recorded in San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
In San Antonio, temperatures dropped to 12 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 16 degrees set in 1895, the weather service said in a tweet. Corpus Christi broke the record of 20 degrees, also set in 1895. On Tuesday, the temperature was 19 degrees.
Dallas and Wichita Falls also set new records on Tuesday, recording minus 2 and minus 8 degrees, respectively.
The intense cold contributed to an overloaded electrical system, resulting in power interruptions or total blackouts for more than 3 million people. On Monday, the Texas Electric Reliability Council, which oversees the state’s power grid, ordered rotating power outages in an effort to prevent longer, uncontrolled power outages, NBC Dallas-Forth Worth reported.
Without the ability to turn on the heaters, Texas residents were forced to resort to other means.
“We just have so many blankets, like a little bit, and we’re going to the car and trying to warm up there and charge for the phones and try to face [the electricity] alternating back and forth. It’s not sustainable, ”said Juany Torres, a graduate student at the University of Texas and residing in San Antonio.
Torres, his parents and two brothers resorted to cuddling under heavy blankets to weather the cold temperatures.
Having not experienced such drastic freezes, Torres said, she learned on Twitter that she had to let the water drip and said she was not sure what that meant. But they still lost water for a while and now they don’t have hot water. Their electric stove does not heat anything and the family does not have a barbecue.
She and her family are living together, so they didn’t have to break any Covid-19 protocols. But, she said, she and other relatives living apart are now talking about how they can combine resources. An aunt with a gas stove may have to get into her bubble to keep everyone safe.
All 254 counties in Texas were under winter warnings and more than 3.2 million people across the state were out of power on Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.US.
“Like in the summer, when everyone wants their air conditioning on, everyone wants their heating and we’re overloading the system and the electrical system,” Joshua Rhodes, associate researcher at the Webber Energy Group / Energy Institute, University of Texas in Austin, said. Texas Public Radio.
“Until temperatures return to normal where we see them in winter, we will have a few more days of that, I think,” he said.
Rhodes said the idea behind continuous interruptions is to keep demand low, but also to keep energy in homes long enough to give people an adequate temperature to cook, clean and do whatever it takes.
“It is difficult to do when energy has been missing for so long,” he said.
Julian Gutierrez, 30, his two sisters and his brother-in-law also live in southern San Antonio. His mother and 10-year-old son were also with him, but it ended up getting very cold and it was going to get colder, so he sent them both to his grandmother’s house because she has power. She also lives in the south of the city, about five minutes north of him, he said.
The last time he saw his thermostat, the temperature in his house was 55, but the power has not been turned on since Monday and he is no longer able to read his thermometer.
Gutierrez said he was filling up with clothes and blankets. He was experiencing power outages, but the time between them was getting shorter and shorter until he ran out of power.
His family managed to use the microwave during the blackouts, but when the power was finally turned off, they had to be creative. His brother-in-law found tea lamps, placed them on top of a cake tin and used two large cans of Gatorade Power to place a pot of water on the candles.
“We boiled Ramen all night,” said Gutierrez.
They planned to use a barbecue they have in the yard on Tuesday.
Gutierrez said his grandmother’s house is very small and is rapidly becoming full of relatives. He was forced to stay as long as he could to endure the cold.
Outside the La Michoacana grocery store and a nearby Walmart, people were freezing and waiting to buy supplies. The stores allowed only a few people to enter at a time to avoid overcrowding. People were masked, but there was not much social distance.
Joanna Martinez, 29, waited in line to get into Walmart and buy Pampers. In the second of three days without electricity, she and her family were staying at a hotel. The first hotel they tried had no energy, but ended up reaching one that did.
The historic climate is also causing problems for the launch of San Antonio’s Covid-19 vaccination, according to San Antonio councilwoman Adriana Garcia Rocha. She estimated that her area had about 3,000 unused doses in her district and on the west side of San Antonio that needed to be stored.
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“We had to make sure that the vaccines were transferred somewhere that had no interruptions. The San Antonio Fire Department helped get them to safety, ”she said. “We can’t risk anything.”
The city opened shelters and hotels for homeless people, she said. As for herself, she remained at home and is relying on supplies of emergency food that she had hidden.
“Since the Covid situation started, I have canned meat on reserve and just things that can be easy to prepare, just in case,” she said. “Last night, we ate cereal for dinner and lit candles.”
Her grill is frozen, she added.
Council members were trying to hold an emergency meeting, but she said that about five colleagues also have no power, so they cannot connect to a meeting. Hospitals, many nursing home facilities and other intensive care facilities are on a separate network, so their energy has not been interrupted, she said.
“It doesn’t happen often in San Antonio, so there is a lot of learning going on, even for us,” she said.
Suzanne Gamboa reported from San Antonio and Alicia Victoria Lozano from Los Angeles.