As a brutal winter storm hit much of Texas, Cecilia Corral scoured social media posts written by other Austin residents. From single mothers and their newborns, other people in their town were freezing without heating or desperately in need of food.
“Yesterday, I lost count of how many times I cried with what I was seeing,” said Corral, co-founder and vice president of product at CareMessage, a nonprofit and patient engagement platform focused on clinically underserved areas.
Millions of Texans were cold and in the dark on Tuesday, unleashing suffering and death in a state that produces most of the country’s electricity, but somehow lost control of its own power grid in the midst of a harsh winter. Amid the catastrophe, photos of the illuminated city skylines circulated on social networks, provoking outrage and revealing how socioeconomically disadvantaged families and people of color endured an extraordinary burden of disastrous employee management.
“It is not just today. It is not just this emergency. It’s an emergency, ”said Natasha Harper-Madison, Austin’s temporary mayor. “These are the types of disparities that we normally see all the time. They were simply amplified because of the emergency. “
With temperatures below freezing and inches of snow shocking Texans in recent days, triggered thermostats have struggled with tougher operating conditions at power plants. With vertiginous energy demand and diminishing supply, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electricity in most parts of the state, initiated interruptions to try to deal with some 34,000 megawatts of lost energy.
But critical infrastructure has been exempt from long-term blackouts, benefiting residents in the densest and wealthiest areas that often host these services and hurting underserved communities forced to live in neighborhoods where those resources are scarce.
In Austin, the state capital, widespread blackouts once again highlighted the city’s “racial and economic segregation”, said Harper-Madison.
The images showed Austin’s chic downtown – kept online to support heating centers, a local hospital, government buildings, etc. – juxtaposed to the blackouts around. In Dallas, skyscrapers lit up in festive reds and pinks for Valentine’s Day this long weekend, frivolously draining the city’s energy, and Houston’s office buildings also shone on Monday night. while the locals trembled in their homes.
Initially, continuous power interruptions were supposed to last a matter of minutes, but as the power grid sank, they far exceeded those expectations, sometimes for days. “The current situation is not – absolutely unsustainable. There is no excuse for that, ”said Varun Rai, director of the University of Texas Energy Institute.
As houses and apartments get terribly cold, hundreds of Texans use life-threatening methods such as railings, cars or heat generators and become seriously ill from carbon monoxide poisoning, including a woman and girl who died in Houston.
In Austin, people also face a lack of basic necessities, such as diapers, personal items, baby formula and food for themselves and pets, because they are unable to prepare properly for the storm.
“People are desperate at this point,” said Harper-Madison, “and they didn’t have to reach the point of despair.”
More than a year after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that devastated communities of color, the emergence of winter represents yet another tragic example of how centuries of mistreatment, neglect and unfair political decisions have left blacks, browns and the poor in the United States disproportionately vulnerable Whenever disaster strikes.
“These communities will have to go back to work in a few days, when the snow melts,” said Corral. “Who’s going to advocate for them so that it doesn’t happen again?”