The INFAMOUS Texas Deep Freeze 2021
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- The in-depth story of the Brutal Texas Winter Storm 2021.
A state known for its resilience against heat suddenly finds itself at the mercy of two brutal winter storms. Families are left grappling with the unprecedented cold and days-long power outages.
It soon becomes a life-threatening situation…
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We reveal the world's darkest and greatest disasters all based on true stories.
This disaster documentary is inspired by the fantastic "Fascinating Horror". 
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Its sad to see that many people dont know the dangers of carbon monoxide
It makes me sad that it isnt common sense. Something similar happened in upstate NY, I believe where a woman died from carbon monoxide poisoning because she slept in her car, but she didnt check to see if her exhausts were blocked by the snow. They were.
@@mikaross4671 Oof, actually that one might have got me too. Unless i was sleeping in my car because i was snowed in of course 🤔
It's equally sad that there are states that don't have a carbon monoxide alarm mandate. There are just so many things with this whole situation that could have saved so many lives.
@@ScaredyGinge This happened in the garage though. I don't know any states that have carbon monoxide alarms in the garage, seeing as, it's the garage. With cars that give off carbon monoxide.
@@kristinsreese And the little boy in the trailer? Would that not have possibly saved him?
Didn’t expect to see a disaster that I actually lived through on this channel. I remember my dad burning scrap wood in the fireplace so we could stretch our firewood supplies, and moving all the food in the fridge into the snow so it wouldn’t go bad. Crazy times.
The Racoons: 🤤
They freezing too lol@@Andy_the_Collector_
Bizarre, isn't it?
I "lived" through this, nothing changed except my energy bill going up for the month.
Same. In Dallas, and didn’t have it near as bad as some. Neighbors in my apartment complex came together to help each other out with water, batteries and flashlights, food, and use of microwaves (the buildings that had power. At the very least, I love that we came together as a community.
My friend lived through this. He was constantly connecting onto discord calls whenever he could because he was isolated and his area was heavily blacked out. Even to this day he still thanks me for being there to help him stay sane, I can only imagine the fear he must have gone through. We joke about it now, but back then I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the verge of tears.
Sounds like a biotch. It wasnt that bad we were stuck too and had covid.
Womp womp
@@CesarPreciado-s6xshut your goofy ahs up cesar
It wasn’t that bad 🤣🤣
Bruh it wasn’t even that bad and everyone acting like it was an apocalypse
People really have zero survival skills whatsoever
I remember this time very vividly. I was a GM at a local restaurant and I remember looking at the weather forecast on a daily basis. I was shocked to see how cold it was supposed to get. I have lived here almost 40 years and we have never seen temperatures get to single digits, much less 0 with wind chill going below 0 degrees. It was a Valentine's Day I will never forget. The store shut down early thank the Lord, all though higher ups wanted us to stay open as late as possible as usual. The next few days were heart wrenching. The power was out at home, My sibling and I were contemplating on staying home or driving to our parents house close by. We were shocked and scared. We aren't used to dealing with deathly cold temperatures. We had to sleep in our cars because the generators were frozen and wouldn't start. Now granted we knew about carbon monoxide poisoning and our cars were parked outside in the country, not in a garage, but for people with small children, who are scared for their lives might not think clearly when the choices are: freezing to death, drive around treacherous roads risking your life, or keep the car on for heat at your home. Most people don't think to prepare for a catastrophe. It's all in the moment. No one expected to be without power for 4-7 days. Hell, I had to go back to work 3 days later. The 2nd day one of my family members had a mental breakdown and said they'd rather freeze to death in their house stunned me. Thankfully no one passed away in our family, but what a lot of northerners need to know, is we do not have adequate resources here for winter weather. We don't have snow plows, and the de-icing trucks we have to get from elsewhere. The worst is like this fine RUclips video illustrates the state officials, energy companies, and even emergency response did not listen to the OBVIOUS WARNINGS. The Weather Channel was sending warnings, actual warnings a week in advance, and nothing was done. I'm not sure if they could have stopped the power outages, but they could have saved more lives instead of leaving us out to dry. Anyway ranting over hope everyone stays safe and Happy Independence Day!
The biggest punch in the face is that a LOT of this could have been avoided if Texas learned from what they had experienced roughly 10 years prior to this.
The Groundhog's Day Blizzard of 2011 was catastrophic to parts of the Texas Grid, so bad that the state of Texas had to get power from Mexico. The US Army Corps of Engineers told them they needed to winterize their power grid, extreme winter weather happens more often than people think. Texas straight up ignored that until it bit them in the rear end.
Capitalism doesn''t work if essential things are not in law. Recommendations do nothing when only thing companies care is money.
They still haven't learned. It'll happen again in 10 years lol.
Dude. The sheer amount of ignorance that is so common among people has never made sense to me. Like carbon monoxide due to indoor combustion is something I knew about as a CHILD. It's one thing for children to be ignorant because bad parenting, but it's a totally different thing for grown adults to be so ignorant.
@@SpaceRaptorJesusJedi I think a lot of people forget about that sort of thing because of how we get power and heat. It's not really an issue for most people and it quickly turns into an 'out of sight, out of mind' situation. Then you throw in a disaster situation that a lot of those people have never experienced and that's when things start to spiral. It's a damn shame more people don't take care to prepare for these times of situations BEFORE they happen. And many will not take steps afterwards since 'when will it happen again?'. Prepare like it's guaranteed to happen every year.
They did, they had the systems in place, they failed to maintain them.
this was the one time that living in a tiny, crappy, run down apartment actually wound up working in my favor. it's a lot easier to keep a tiny room warm.
Small mercies can mean the world at the right time.
@@CassandraYreally have to live a life to learn to count your blessings. Many don't understand that concept. They live life, even successfully, yet lessons fly right over their heads.
yup, holed up in a room with every blanket in the apartment, layers, and another warm body. my apartment dropped to 36 degrees in the first night and i spent about 80-90% of the time without power and having to drive around the city to find some sort of food was so difficult, we were not prepared at all.
Had thick blankets on the door frame and windows, thick blankets over all the mattresses in living room floor, had thicker blankets tied off the hallways and stayed in room. Didn't know why they hell I collected blankets all my adult life until that day. Glad I was a blanket hoarder.
Yep i did the same. Used my grill to heat up bricks and then had the bricks in pots and pans in the room with me to radiate heat. Showed the trick to my neighbors and warned them about running grills or cars indoors. People panic in moments like that and make foolish choices. Gotta look out for each other. It was really sad when i got power back to go online and see all the cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I lived through this. I had just gotten the keys to my new apartment the day before everything froze over. I wound up stuck in that apartment before I could move anything into it. Literally no furniture whatsoever, two changes of clothes, a few blankets, and some canned food I couldn't cook.
I had to sleep in my tiny walk in closet with my dog so we wouldn't freeze. One neighbor died from C02 poisoning in their apartment, another in their car because their exhaust pipe was buried in snow.
We wound up being evacuated for multiple water and gas pipes bursting everywhere. By the end, my unit was the only one that didn't have burst pipes. I was very lucky, and was bringing water to neighbors for weeks after.
When I returned a few days later, the few water bottles I had left out were frozen solid, but the ones in my refrigerator were still liquid.
During the evacuation there were so many EMS vehicles everywhere that I had to drive up on the sidewalk using the frozen snow as a ramp to get around.
Our fire systems also went haywire and beeped every second, all day, every day for a month. Not an exaggeration.
It was pretty awful and got me into preparedness. I suggest you all do as well.
Bro expect more from your society. You have far better and more sustainable options than prepping.
@Praisethesunson Are you seriously telling someone to not prepare for the worst? Regardless of what society may bring, you should be prepared to take care of yourself without the help of others! A few days worth of food, water and supplies never hurt anyone.
7 days no electricity. My 80 year old mom did not do well. She started having seizures she was so cold and upset. I had prepped as much as possible and had dripping water and was able to cook on my propane stove top. Charged my phone in the car. (We couldn’t leave because we were iced in. The car was in my carport and I was able to carefully get to it. I threw cat litter out on the ice.)Firemen were finally able to get to my door (on foot breaking the snow and ice)on the 5th day with wool army blankets, bottled water and snacks. Those blankets were amazing!
My house was 4 miles from our tiny town.
I moved us to way upstate New York and it’s awesome up here. It may get unbelievably cold, but they’re prepared for it. The electric company actually lets you know ahead of time about storms and messages to keep you updated.
That would NEVER happen in Texas under idiot Abbott. They also have utility discounts and programs for the elderly and disabled up here. Abbott canceled the discount program in Texas years ago. 😡
So... The firefighters thought a wellness check was just knocking on the door and leaving if nobody answers the door??? Dafuq... That's just a ding-dong ditch...
That's what most "wellness checks" are. If you don't answer the door they just leave.
Really! If after being told by the family three times they were concerned about carbon monoxide dangers, the fire fighters didn't have the sense among them to think the people could be passed out??? I hope the family sued them for their stupidity.
I hate to be that person, but I hope that fire chief thinks about the way he spoke to that man on the phone for the rest of his life. There's a chance the mother and daughter could have been saved, especially knowing the father had fainted on the phone. Complete incompetency, imo.
the thing is that they can't break into the place. maybe look through the windows would of been better but not if the curtains were fully closed. there isn't much that could of been done if the person doesn't answer or no immediate evidence something is wrong.
@@KhanaHatake Different country, but in the UK during the ol' lockdowns, my next door neighbour had a welfare check. Three police officers arrived, spent half an hour knocking on the doors, the windows, anything they could do to see or hear anything inside and asking the neighbours if we had seen or heard anything recently.
After that half an hour they called for a locksmith and camped out front in their cars waiting and watching the building for any sign of movement, while occasionally coming back and knocking on the door. When it came to their lunch break they staggered it so there was one of them always present.
Three or four hours later, the lock smith arrives, opens the door and he wasn't home. I actually don't know where he was or what happened as he never came back. But it's scary to go from seeing how the police just hung around until they could confirm one way or another if he was in there and if he was alive or dead, and then you hear stories like in this video where the welfare check gets the no sign of life result, and the authorities just give up and leave.
i think it's genuinely insane that someone could call saying they heard their family member faint over the phone, suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, and no sense of urgency was used to save a family with reported children inside........
"Mhh no one answers at the door. I guess they aren't at home."
@@El_Presidente_5337 Exactly! Like _WTF_ is a wellness check good for anyway!?! They might as well have just drove by slowly, yelled "Aye! Anybody there!?" Not even getting out, and as they roll past the house 2 seconds later, just drive off and been like "Yup. We did a damn fine job on that one, boys! Let's go get breakfast!"
Criminal negligence
It was the person who put themself into the life-threatening situation that is to blame. No one else.
@@randymillhouse791 Imagine blaming the victims
Middle class here not rich. Living in Dallas Texas, and we were fortunate to get through the disaster with no issue at all. My family always stock up groceries every week, we always let the water run during freezing temperatures, and I didn’t knew how bad it was when seeing this video, because I still went to work everyday (yes I drove on the ice, but very slowly). Most coworker said they had no power at their home, so again. We were fortunate compare to many who suffered.
Oh, we always had power and didn’t mind paying what the bill was.
Remember this November CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
I had moved to texas temporarily to help take care of my elderly father in 2020.
I stupidly chose to live in a family owned RV as I didn't want to rent, being I didn't know how long i was going to be there.
I went through that winter of 2021 and then the late summer storm that hit in 2023 with 90 mph winds while living in that RV.
The late summer storm hit two weeks before my planned departure.
Let's just say I am glad to be back in my home state. No state has perfect weather, I know this, but I am okay with the weather where I have lived all my life.
It pissed me off to find the Ercot meeting had spoken of previous concerns of the upcoming 2021 winter storm, all of maybe 3 to 4 minutes.
It also pissed me off to see ppl in other states on social media scoffing at Texas for whining about the "cold weather".
My heart bleeds for the lost lives in 2021. 🙏
Come on man. You can't brag about the weather where you live and not say the state. If you say Wyoming I would be incredibly disappointed.
I was working at a nuclear power plant when this hit, and the nuclear power plants nationwide were able to run at 100% throughout this, due to their design benefits. It was surreal -- because their input to the grid was so critical, absolutely nobody was allowed into the plant for anything except absolutely essential tasks for running the plant. There's normally people going in and out all day and night doing odds and ends, but for about 2 weeks our job was to just sit there, just in case something happened and we were needed.
It doesn't matter when the power lines snap due to ice
Texas is on our own grid, uniquely. So we can’t import electricity or export, I know those aren’t the terms but you know what I mean.
You forgot that some of the nuclear plants in Texas went down because their instruments weren’t winterized and froze shutting the plant down.
meanwhile here in australia..ffs
You probably saved many, many lives!
As someone living in northeast USA, I remember hearing about this when it happened, and there's still a lot in this video I HAVEN'T heard. Hearing about the way people were treated is heartbreaking, especially that man trying to check on his family and first respondents doing essentially nothing for HOURS. Price hiking during this event was awful too. The cold is no joke. Even if you think you'll never see snow, it's NEVER a bad idea to learn about cold and snowstorm preparedness.
What's even worse is people are making fun of this in the comments section, I thought you americans were "united."
@@redline1916 I am sorry, do you not know what kind of election we have going on this year?! 😂 United? Oh, that is cute, lol!
I lived through this and there was stuff in here I hadn't heard about!
@@redline1916Sadly it isn't like that anymore, only half of us are I'd say smh.
Part of the problem with having every service be private and little/no safety nets is that when a disaster occurs, the company still puts profits first. Having a high demand for heat and being the sole supplier to 90% of the State gave them a unique monopoly, and they used it to their advantage. And being immune to lawsuits meant there was nothing to put pressure on them to not do what they did. And I bet moving forward there still won't be any measures put in place to limit or restrict the amount they can charge or change their prices in a short period of time, so if it should happen again they will price hike again, no doubt about it.
I spent 2 days preparing before the storm came. I cleaned the carb on my generator and made sure it was in working order, got 20 gallons of gasoline for it, picked up 3 propane tanks and a propane heater, winterized my house as well as I could manage, stocked up on groceries, filled up a 40gal plastic trash can with water, etc. We never lost power at my house thankfully, I had one pipe freeze and burst under the house but managed to catch it pretty early and cap it off. It was actually a fun time for me just staying home and playing in the snow for a week. It's tragic how many lives were lost and the suffering that a lot of people went through but I'll always have good memories of this storm personally.
I remember this like it was yesterday. This entire week was crazy, people getting into accidents, people dying, the pile of cars on freeway. Then ERCOT going all monday night raw on us Texans when we got the electric bill. We were fortunate enough to have a well insulated home and blankets for days. We had 3 dogs at the time and they loved the snow and 2 of them weren't cold at all since they had thick coats. I was getting ready for my wedding at the time so my wife and I began planning our wedding since our schedules didn't allow us time together to plan it. We didn't have a generator or gas in our house so we had to deal with the rolling black outs. It was wild to see that El Paso was not affected by the storm at all, but all the news and press from our Governor didn't really help either. It was a huge blame game but I had no idea about the house bill being passed. This was a great piece of content, thank you.
Remember this November CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
are you under the impression that they generate and provide power? lol
@deeznoosh no I know that they controlled how much each provider would pay for electricity and this impacts the cost for the consumer regardless of the company you had. If they were connected to ERCOT, your bill would increase.
@@NumbuhWonDierecta lmfao are you under the impression that they set the electricity rate? lol
@deeznoosh i mean they manage the grid and facilitate the market. Without ERCOT, you need find another power source.
the pileup mentioned near the beginning happened 5 mins away from where i live, my dad was supposed to have gone to work that morning but was told to stay home bc of ice on the roads, glad he listened and stayed home
I lost a good friend that day
I live in canada. Every year first bad snow storm. I stay home. There always crashes on the first day. Your dad did the right thing. People forget how to snow drive the first day.
@@michellestewart9197 one of the main issues is, here in Texas, we don't really get much in the way of snow. Instead, we tend to get freezing rain. It doesn't matter what kind of tires you have, or how much experience you have driving in snowy conditions, when you hit black ice there's really not much you can do. You can't tell the difference between simply rain-wet roads and black ice, and you're just screwed if you have to be on the road.
@@zarasha8220 you can’t prevent black ice but, good defensive driving skills helps stay in control. Like she said, people forget how to drive first day, and like you said, Texas doesn’t get it much. It sucks no matter what but looks to be an unfortunate situation with a bit of lack of knowledge.
@@zarasha8220can tell you I hit really bad black ice my first winter; absolutely wrecked my car. Got a drivers course and taught myself and practiced, hit black ice a few years later and I kept myself in control for the most part. you can’t completely gain control over it but there’s a few things you can do to help not just lose all sense of control.
i've been told stories of people finding their grandparents frozen solid in their chairs, that shit is heartbreaking
Chilling story
@@SharmV Uh, no pun intended, right?
the fact that people actually made fun of that shit is even worse
@@redline1916Fr it leaves me frozen in my seat
@@nightmarecat16 i'm shaking, it was that bad.
What people don’t see is all of our livestock that died. Our roads couldn’t handle the cold and broke up and apart all over my area outside of Austin. I wrecked my truck but I had 30 horses without water and nothing would’ve stopped me from bringing it to them. We got lucky, others were not.
You can't have this story without mentioning mattress Mack ( you even used a picture). He let hundreds and hundreds of people into his stores to sleep,eat and stay warm. He's truly an angel ❤.
I live in Houston. The power was out in my area for about five days. It was 13 degrees. I've never been more glad that I collect comfy blankets. I'm disabled so I work from home around 70% bedbound and have to take medication to not sleep for days at a time. When I heard how cold it was going to get, I piled all of my blankets on me and while the power was still on I filled a gallon jug with hot tap water and put it under the blankets with me along with a bunch of non-perishable food. It was so warm and cozy that I had to lift the blankets to let some cold air in occasionally. Just like camping with lots of sleeping. I wondered if most people just didn't own a lot of blankets. Weirdest thing I learned was that some computer mice break easily in the cold. I had to buy a new one because somehow it permanently broke my mouse wheel. At least the food in the fridge was okay after all that time!
I was just wondering if I'd have managed okay due to my similar set up, I didn't even notice covid until a couple of months into it.
@@jasperzatch610 I felt really fortunate that I didn't have much preparing to do for it, because I'm one of those 'be prepared for anything' types and just don't have the money to do so most of the time. I had some kind of mean humor around Covid time because my friends always tell me how nice it must be to be able to do for the most part whatever I want at home all the time, and I've told them yeah it seems nice until you realize how very not-quaint it is not being able to go anywhere when you want to.
They've always told me yeah yeah no problem, I'd deal with it for the freedom. Covid rolls around and suddenly they're wailing ermegerd being stuck in your house all day is sooo lame! How can anyone staaand it? Yeah, I thought so... It's weird to hurt being envied for things you don't want for yourself.
In any case, I hope you don't have to ever worry about dealing with such disasters!
My thermostat said 43 degrees….
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
Same, my family has those heavy mexican blankets so we tried to use them as double insulation on the walls, charged powerbanks when power came back for like 30mins, and ran off ramen boiled off a small pot from a generator and hot plate. It sucked so the best thing we did was 500pc puzzles and to pass hunger just sleep through it but definitely had it better than others who were truly struggling, now I buy all sorts of tools to be prepared.
I survived this disaster with my family, We burned newspapers, old books, and any safe material we could find to keep warm, we lost power, for over 2 days, luckily we were able to find warmth and shelter. I was with my parents and my sister, we had plenty of food from our garden and from previous groceries. I thank God everyday for keeping us all alive in the worst of times
Edit: thanks for the likes, I appreciate it
But, I have more information to add to my story, I remember looking at the outside temperature my phone and it read -2° F which is almost unheard of for Texas, some broadcasts that still worked reported temperatures as low as -28° F so, we were very fortunate
ME TOO! I stayed HOME, 1800 miles AWAY!!!
Close to 10 for me if I remember right... negative outside in a sub of ftw. With a shit power structure that my boyfriend 2 streets away got power in 3 days.
Welp I moved north east of ftw ... I'm expecting more hell
My son lives in Dallas and for whatever reason, he had power and invited friends to stay with them until they got their power back.
I hate to say it but our state government's denial of serious climate issues was a factor in this. Our summers are going to be getting hotter and our winters are going to be getting colder because of the impact our pollution has on our climate, and even if the current state government for some reason doesn't "believe" in it the least they can do is prepare us for disasters that might be due to repeat themselves sooner than you think.
Make sure you rightly reward CANCUN CRUZ for his DELIBERATE ABANDONMENT OF HIS PEOPLE
I lost half my house. Took two years of constant fighting with State Farm to get most of it repaired. It was still better than what others had to deal with.
I haven’t watched this yet, I’m about to start it. But I wanted to first say that I was living in San Antonio at the time this happened and in my 36 years on this Earth, having experienced blizzards and ice storms in the northeast, this was horrifying.
And something I never want to experience again.
Our town had a few deaths because of this. One guy brought his grill inside to warm part of the house at night and the whole family suffocated. Another family had their home burn down due to using grilling coals in his fireplace that wasn't rated for it. Then a hotel in town (killeen) burned down and the pipes were frozen so they had to let it burn. At one point Lowes started to sell all their lumbar for people to burn, they had a line out the door. It was pandemonium, our house went over a week with no running water as the main pipe feeding the subdivision had burst.
Bringing a grill inside to heat the house is some big brained thinking
Standard in America when 1/4th of your people are mentally not all there or as you call “slow”
@@tomahawk7259 but not big enough to remember that carbon monoxide exists.
Grill in the house is the most Texas way you can die to be fair
That is so funny
I live in Atlanta, GA and was visiting my boyfriend in Texas when this happened. We didn't have heat or power for four days and my flights kept getting canceled. Luckily, his roommate has a backup battery that used solar power to recharge so we could have our phones charged and a small heating plate to warm up canned soup. We wore lots of layers of clothes and drank alcohol just to stay warm. They didn't have a fireplace or portable heaters.
It was quite the experience but we were a bit better prepared than most people. They had plenty of canned food, blankets, and clothes to bundle up. My heart goes out to the people that lost loved ones.
Just an FYI....alcohol only provides the illusion of warming up. It actually drops your core temperature and that's why you think you are warmer, because it is about the difference in temp that affects our perception.
Alcohol doesn’t help lol
Most Texan response I’ve heard 😂 lucky the storm didn’t last couple more days
I live in Buffalo, NY. A PSA list on how to prepare for this again (god forbid)
Wrap your windows in plastic to create an extra air barrier (if you don’t have window wrap, you can use blankets and duct tape), close all heavy curtains to also help prevent draft, and place towels at your doors to keep draft out of there as well. (Remember your not trying to keep the cold out, it will still get cold, but rather you are trying to slow down the heat loss as much as possible). Take towels and wash cloths and duct tape and wrap up that main water coming into the home. And leave all water faucets on a trickle to prevent freezing. If you’re worried about your toilet cracking and flooding, shut off the water to the toilet and empty the tank. You can fill up a bucket in the bathtub and pour water into the tank to flush as needed (But still keep a little water in the bowl or it will get smelly). Try to keep family in one room as often as possible and close all doors in the house. Purchase all the wool you can. Wool blankets, wool socks, wool sweaters. Nothing is warmer than wool. Get a Little Buddy propane heater. They are safe and designed for indoor use and create no carbon monoxide. I use those in an I insulated garage in the winter when I’m working and it can be 20 degrees outside and it’s 55 or 60 degrees in the garage even on a low setting. Get a portable generator and a power inverter so you can still supply heat to your house. But keep the generator outside and run an extension cable indoors. And if your furnace is still able to run, every once in a while go outside and make sure your exhaust is clear of ice and snow drifts to prevent CO build up. For your car, keep a small snow shovel in there and bags of sand or kitty litter so you can dig out your tires and add traction to get unstuck. Keep extra food and water in the car and extra cold weather clothing and blankets in case you are stuck.
PS if you get a generator, you MUST run it a bit to break the engine in after an hour or two, then give it a full oil change. Then your generator will be ready to run for a long time. Too many people bought generators for the first time without knowing that you have to break them in and change the oil, so a lot of generators seized up and left people in the cold.
thats what I did, I pinned up blankets on all my windows and doors, it did help. but me and the roomie and pets stayed in the warmest room, which was the TV room. Thankfully we never lost power, but he houses across the street did. I dont ever want to go through this again.
As a Native Houstonian ty for that❤
God, I remember ALL of this! I'm from San Antonio, and my Dad still lives there, I'm now in Indiana. The reason WHY I know so much about it, even though I live in another state, is because my father, who was right in the middle of this whole thing, thank God he made it out okay, and was even able to stay in his apartment, but, I was told my Aunt froze to death during this! When we were finally were able to contact one another again, we talked on the phone a very long time about this, the inepitude of HOW the Texan Power Grid was being run, the guy in charge almost got in VERY big trouble, and was either facing THIS, or, the total shutdown to the ENTIRE state! My Aunt was the last of my father's family to die, I am ALL he has left now! Man, I NEVER expected to see a video here, about something I VERY clearly remember, and my father LIVED THROUGH, on this Channel, New Sub!
My personal experience with this freeze: a roommate just moved in and got settled, they were a coworker of fiancee and I, other roommate's dog gave birth to puppies. First day of the freeze we try going to work, keyword try. 2nd day water no longer works. For the rest of the week we are trapped in this house unable to work with the only silver lining being we still have power. I scooped up ice from outside and boiled it just to have water. Me and the new roomie get closer as friends and i adopted one of the puppies. The puppy is now three years old. It was one hell of a greuling week but our job paid us in compensation.
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F-TEXAS I'M OUT
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F*CK TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
@@user-mt8zc8ww1y YES! CANCUN CRUZ!
The weather during this storm was NOT unprecedented. They have gotten prolonged below freezing temperatures in the past. So much of the disaster is due to horrifically inadequate weatherization of power generation, water mains, and building plumbing. Not to mention the completely isolated texas grid with the inability to import power. If this cold freeze happened anywhere else in the US, the worst that would have happened is roads being shut down.
This. And yeah, we seem to have one of these severe winter storms about every 10 years.
Let’s not forget that the state of Texas is run by and represented by a bunch of a-holes who are more concerned with calling anyone who raises the alarm about climate change and the need for paying attention to potential disasters like this “libtards” and “snowflakes” than actually governing for the safety and betterment of the people.
Let’s lay this right where it belongs: at the wheels of Gov. Abbott and all the elected and appointed officials who are more concerned with making sure women can’t get proper medical care than paying attention to the infrastructure necessary to withstand weather events like this. Wouldn’t want to have had regulations that didn’t allow for charging customers $10,000 for one month’s power bill (yes, those happened) get in the way of record profits for energy company shareholders.
We had a similar storm in the 90s.
Also, Texas has interstate power connections with all surrounding states that can be connected in emergencies, it was even mentioned in the video. Those connections were active during the event to purchase and import power from the western grid.
I live in NW Iowa and we were seeing -25F with -55 windchill during this time. Thankfully we didn't lose power (all it takes is that one tree branch) and my furnace survived running 24/7. After this storm I bought a generator just in case.
That is incorrect. You can search “feb 2021 power outage” + any state around Texas and see that most of the states in the middle of the USA lost power during those couple days. The media was very happy to target Texas though, so you only heard about Texas.
I'm from SA,TX. I remember being at home with my family, and we were so excited for the snow to come. It never shows here. On day one, we were having so much fun, missing school and work and having fun in the snow. Around day 3, we had enough. We didn't have electricity or running water for like 2 days.
Resident of the outer suburban Austin area here.
I live about 20-30 minutes from the city
I remember that night the storm started to roll in as I was staying up just playing some games on my computer, It was very very eerily quiet as intermittent gusts of wind started, I took my headset off and I could hear the trees that swayed get more crisp in nature as the leaves froze. I had some uneasy maybe slightly nervous feeling in my stomach as I was watching the temperature drop really quickly over a few short hours, 50°F, 42°F, 34°F, 23°F, 19°F, 16°F realizing that this is the coldest I've ever seen from my entire life in Texas. Fortunately we had a gas heater but that thing was running all night. I Decided to get to sleep at around 3am or 4am because I had online classes the following day. I woke up at 8 to find my house completely out of power and water not working and since our central heating required an electric motor to run the other aspects of the HVAC furnace, that wasn't working. I took a look outside and saw nothing but a thick blanket of snow, originally finding it really cool since we hardly ever get snow in central Texas. Since power was out I obviously could not attend online class so I walked around the house and prepared myself something to eat that didn't need to be heated up, probably a bowl of cereal, being careful not to keep the fridge open for too long. while staring in awe outside the windows, It was still 16 or 18 degrees but not thinking it was too serious yet I went out to mess around in the snow as it didn't feel cold since wind wasn't blowing but quickly came in realizing I shouldn't still be out there for too long. I tried using my phone to keep myself entertained but service was also out. The weight of the situation didn't start hitting until I realized it was getting into the afternoon and power still was not on. The house getting colder and we started burning firewood in our fireplace to stay warm, and fortunately natural gas was still working so we could get that fire going. That's what we used as our main source of heat for the days following. Fortunately when we trim our trees during spring or fall months we save the large cutting for fire wood and we had a large back stock of fire wood logs in our yard to keep fueling the fire, I have no idea how we'd be if we didn't have that. I realized fully that we weren't going to have power for the night, the nights were the worst. My room I usually sleep in has a large window and a lightly insulated wall to the garage and it was arguably one of the coldest rooms in the house as night fell. I was unable to sleep there and my family took a sleeping bag and gave it to me as I layered up with thick sweat pants and clothes and a heavy jacket and slept in their walk in closet but I still shivered, just barely warm enough to sleep but I could.
Either the next day or early in the morning I (I couldn't tell there wasn't any window) I Woke up to the light in the closet being on but it went out 5 or 10 minutes later I assume this is when the rolling blackouts were happening and went back to sleep and finally got up some time in the morning. Again power still out and feeling insanely cold so I sat by the fire place. I'm so happy our natural gas still worked as we were able to cook something a little nice for breakfast lunch and dinner, definitely helped bring up the morale a bit. However we were still fighting our water outages. We decided on melting snow over the stove to use to flush out toilets since it flushed with a large amount of water being dumped in, it's how they usually work and we drank from plastic water bottles because we had a backstock of them. But we had 2 more nights ahead of us. The cold never let up for pretty much almost the whole week.
the same sleeping situation ensued. Colder however.
We repeated our same process for the days following but I'm happy we had a carbon monoxide detector, I feel like from all the cooking and the fire place being on so much, a little carbon monoxide built up because our carbon monoxide alarm went off once but didn't continue, checked the value on the alarm and it did pick up a fair amount but it diffused I think and we were fine. No passing out. But power came on in very irregular and short intervals which wasn't enough to be useful, maybe we got a few additional degrees of temperature back in our house but I wasn't sure, We went about our business and went to sleep with the same process.
the following day we had a miracle thrown to us the cold started to let up a little bit, and My mother's boss has a hotel room just a few minutes away that she was offering to us which would allow us to have electricity, water, a shower, and sleep without shivering we drove our way out there carefully with our stuff on the icy roads and arrived fine. The hotel was filled with locals, and because everything was fine inside, the atmosphere was actually quite welcoming, seeing all the fellow Texans gathered and fighting it out together with each other, cracking jokes about it, talking about their situations, etc. it was... So much nicer compared to what we were going through at home, we stayed a night and slept like babies. and made our way home to electricity again! Consistently! Water was still out however but came back a day later, fortunately without pipes bursting and we started to get settled, the following days were still cold but the storm was departing. But I could sleep comfortably again. I updated my friends letting them know and the week after I remember some friends in Canada wondering how it got so bad. Or friends from the more norther states wondering how it got so bad.
This event is something Texas isn't used to. The closest being the groundhog day blizzard, Maybe it's climate change, maybe it's just chance, but recently winters have been colder in years past especially last year, and we got some type of winter precipitation at least once per year now, where before it was maybe once every few years. our houses are built to expell heat because we're more used to the 100° summers. and that's what we know. When the polar opposite happens we aren't as ready as apparent in this disaster. Even if these events are rare, we should still be equally as prepared as every other state.
our family was okay and so were our neighbors as well. But we certainly will never forget this catastrophic deep freeze.
My thoughts condolences and prayers go out to the less fortunate families and people lost in this event.
I moved out of Austin just before only one state north. We had 11 days where the high didn’t get above freezing. It was miserable but we had heat and power the whole time. It was interesting to see how only one state north was better prepared.
Bruh 😂
@@GarretGrayCamera Same, moving to Tulsa from TX wasn't my first choice, but ironically, the heat I thought I was leaving behind was plentiful in Okla- at least via electricity. I never knew TX wasn't part of a national grid until this happened. Water mains had burst all over the city, but no biggie. It's being cozy & warm, able to cook, use the internet, etc. that matters most.
😂😂 well I never thought I'd see this. Born and raised, man water pipe broke didn't have water for 2months. When the power was out I walked to my job(power was on to charge my phone) fell and ate it. BUT got to my restaurant job to charge our stuff (we definitely weren't gonna open)
Then people started knocking in the glass asking if we had food. We looked around the kitchen everything was fine....we smiled at each other opened the kitchen and just started giving out free food! It was crazy everyone was caught off guard. People asking to buy everything we said no it has to be able to go around. They gave us cases of beer 😂 and cash it was free. It was a unique moment for us helping our community.
2 months?! ☹️ Cool about sharing food though!
Sucks when it takes a literal disaster to bring humanity together. I'm a Floridian I see it after every hurricane
You are an angel on earth, which makes up for your sin of being a Texan. Bless.
@@gohawks3571Yeah I was getting those massive Ozarks jugs walking them down the street. 😂 It was "a time"
@@Lil-Britches Dang, dude! Must have looked ready for a Mr. Muscles competition after that! Wow... I would not have fared well, since I was sick during those times 😱
Barely a mention of how Texas is cut off from the rest of the countries grid. Meaning power cannot be rerouted from another state into Texas. There are 3 major power sectors in the US. Eastern, Western and Texas. Then they jack up prices when things like this happen. Case study of what deregulation can lead to.
And lead to "Cancun Cruz."
Without going back through the whole video to check, I feel like the grid being mostly self contained got mentioned three times. Maybe there should have been more focus on it as a dedicated point, but it wasn't quite barely mentioned.
The wholesale price for electricity fluctuates wildly, but most consumers are on fixed price plans. The people affected by the price spike were on plans that directly exposed them to the market rate. They were perfectly happy paying $0.03-0.05/kwh under normal conditions but when it spiked to $3-4/kwh they ended up with massive bills. The problem wasn't the spike in price, it was that consumers weren't properly informed of the risk and didn't set aside money in case of a massive surge.
This was a relatively small percentage of people, but the news blew it out of purportion. As far as the surge pricing goes, it was the consumer's decision to go with the plan they did, not the price being "jacked up. Prices fluctuate normally on all grids. I'd recommend doing research before making assumptions. Texas lawmakers do plenty of things you should be pissed about, this isn't one of them.
I'm sure that POS Cruz was nice and warm...along with Abbott.. As long as the money rolls in they could care less about the people of Texas.. Well at least the ones barely making it or poor people
I was renting a crappy little apartment in Crowley TX at this time. Power went out for 19 hrs but thankfully that crappy little apartment had a fire place and I had a lot of firewood on stand by. Just me and my pit bull sitting beside each other covered up watching the fire and staying warm.
i remember being there on vacation in san antonio when this happened, on the first day all of the roads around our hotel were closed and the streets were caked in snow, me and my siblings may or may not have played in it for a bit, but throughout the day we noticed that businesses were dropping like flies, the water to our hotel room was cut off due to freezing pipes, so early the next morning we high-tailed it out of there before things could get any worse, i pray for the families still affected by this event
I got hit pretty hard by this storm too. To our benefit, we were friends with a neighbor who had a fire place, so we went over there during the days to shelter around the fire as much as possible. We essentially lost all water and power, we would get 10 seconds of power every 2 hours. Couldn’t even microwave soup. So we lived off grill heated (grill was outside) soup and pancakes. Eventually they ran out of logs, and we were stuck back on our own. However, we learned that one of my schoolmates family house still had full power and water. We suspect because they were in the same grid as a fire station. They hosted us and a couple other families for a couple days, letting us have a warm place to be, hot food, and hot shower. My dad and I kept going back to our house periodically between all this to keep pipes from bursting and see if it was livable. I think the lowest the house got to was about 39 degrees. I remember waking up feeling like my bed was frozen. Luckily, after it all, we just had a few frozen pipes and boiled water for a few days. I also just so happened to have a heavy duty winter jacket because I was about to go to New York, so I was well prepared at least. It became a “grit and bear it” situation, but we got through relatively well comparatively.
I would also like to shoutout that an owner to a massive furniture store was able to keep the building powered with back up generators and opened the building and all the furniture to whoever needed it during the storm. I know it was a great place of respite for a large sum of people.
As a Minnesotan I remember watching the news and being absolutely baffled. I couldn’t understand how people were dying in a storm that we have dozens of times a year up here. That was the type of weather where kids here would still go to school through. It was just so puzzling until I realized that none of the people who built the infrastructure there even thought about the possibility of things going even slightly wrong.
I've experienced a similar sort of thing here. The news will be trying to brew some panic over England getting a few days of below freezing temperatures, and I'll joke to my Scottish friends that it looks like I'm in for a cold week and they'll laugh back with, "ken we've had for a month? Stop being a big baby!" But then their friends from up in Norway laughs at the Scottish for being disgruntled at having to deal with snow and ice every winter, when it's just everyday life for them!
It's not just the infrastructure either, I've only met their Norwegian friends once, at their wedding, but they had quite the laugh at seeing some of us struggle to drive on the slippy roads due to the complete lack of experience dealing with the weather that bad to them.. mostly the English lot that chose to drive there. The way he tells it, in Norway you either become a Rally driver, or you due to a tree on the side of the road.
So for people living in what's basically blasting heat 99% of the time, that complete lack of experience dealing with that cold snap regularly enough, it led to far too many fatal errors.
Minnesota here also, I agree, then last year California got hit hard, now we are experiencing flooding and im impress that 100 year old dam still holds up, I don't wanna think what winter holds for us this year
Global warming caused it.
In central europe this would be a completely normal thing
Wonder what they would do in texas if they get 2 meters of snow
because.... you're built for it?
I worked in downtown Fort Worth when this happened. Luckily the company I worked for provided us hotel accommodations, food, and extra pay. (Sundance Square Security is a 24/7/365 operation)
We helped numerous people stranded in vehicles, including homeless people living in their cars, with everything from tow trucks to food and warming items. It was a surreal experience working in conditions like that.
i remember the house being so quiet and my mom tucking me in with 3 blankets as a 16 year old.. i remember praying my mom was okay driving on the frozen roads to work, and my family lighting candles. texas was really not prepared lol
Let's not forget the crazies who insisted that the snow wasn't snow at all...
lets not forget it? people dont actually think that, go touch grass.
@@HughWanztino They 100% did, and maybe still do.
@@HughWanztinopeople from my hometown unfortunately did. They’re all super far right and fckin crazy.
Aside from how bad the situation was, that sounds even worse! I can't take how stupid we're getting 😒😒😒
@@HughWanztino they did though, And i dont even live in the US it still caught in my twitter feed for some reason
I live in Texas, i thought the freeze would never end since it lasted a whole week, the aftermath was just as bad with empty stores everywhere. I was one of the lucky ones to have power and hot water all week except for the last few days of the freeze power shut off for several hours it was because my apartment was on a priority node for my towns hospital.
I took ice cold showers. It was terrible
I belong to an Electric Coop in North Texas, and they were doing rolling blackouts, with a 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off rotation. It got down to the low 50s in my house, but it didn't freeze.
I was one of the lucky ones with power too. I also saw ice in places I never thought I'd see it
@@SlashinatorZsame, was across the street of a fire station. I was rather young so i didn't understand the magnitude of it since i was unaffected
it was only a week and it got this bad? That's wild, i'm so sorry- I genuinely thought it was like a month or something (from the uk, we haven't had a big freeze like this since I was a kid and I'm only 26)
I worked in the permian before rona. We burned NG at the wellsite and sold power to the grid. Rona hit, and we stacked the generators in a yard. Hundreds of MW of generation, mothballed for later use.
Started working on emergency generators in Austin, during the freezepocalypse. Most of the power loss was due to un trimmed trees. The power lines were ran behind the houses in the '70s, and the trees had grown over the power lines. The trees had never dipped that far due to the way the ice hit. There was no access for the power company to trim them, and the homeowners never did.
Consumers not understanding how complex electricity is, how it works, and that 99% uptime is an incredible feat in the first place.
I woke up one morning during this storm with water pouring into my master closet through the overhead light fixture Fortunately, I did not lose much in my apartment. But other apartments in my complex were totally destroyed and had to be gutted. It took a year for all the repairs. I was 81 at the time and I really don’t know what I would have done if I had not had family nearby. I called my son and he told me to pack a bag; he was on the way. I spent the next ten days with him and his wife. Although we had rolling blackouts, they had plenty of food that did not have to be cooked or could be heated quickly. And they had a gas fireplace that we were able to use. They were both able to work from home so they were able to spend a lot of time at home. I was so lucky to have them.
Huh who would of thought a independent power grid where you cant import power was risky
I'm sure that's how many states view themselves and how they're organized. If they're sovereign states, then what happens elsewhere won't happen to them, right? But the opposite can happen and they get toasted. Similar to how many Americans talk about their own rights and autonomy, but when something bad happens to them, they're all about "you need to help me".
That's republicans for you
@@mattwolf7698 Human lives are worth less than a profit to them, that's blatantly obvious.
@@celticlass8573just look at Europe, they all attempted to wean themselves off of Russian gas
@@mattwolf7698the rep for Texas Ted Cruz went to Cancun Mexico 😂
I think most of us Texans have a degree of PTSD cause of this. Toilet paper, bread, and water frequently go out of stock due to any little thing now. As for myself, I decided to visit a friend in Galveston that weekend and decided I can beat the storm if I left early enough back to Austin. A 3 hour trip took 2 day, and I nearly got stuck (almost died, I'm sure) on the road. I had never been so scared in my life, I was 26 at the time and traveling alone.
Did it change any Texans feelings about their power grid setup?
Same. It was a defining moment in my community.
@@whitneylosh-johnson2420 my company decided to get a back up generator so if there is a power failure or ice storm again, we'll still be able to come in and work. 😂
@@squeekydinky That's one of the most Texan things I've ever heard.
@@whitneylosh-johnson2420 Right to Work means Get to Work lol
Lived through this, w/o power for 3 days, consider myself blessed. But because no power for a TV, I didn't know what the news was saying. Thank you for sharing.
I'm from the Dallas/Ft Worth area I had never experienced that kind of cold! My electricity was out for days! Thankfully my friend had power and told me to come over I'm so thankful for that because it was absolutely brutal!
This is what happens when you deruglate utility companies so much that your whole state refuses to join the western or eastern interconnect.
Ah yes. Let us put a completely necessary service in the hands of companies that answer to no one but shareholders. What could possibly go wrong?!
I hate that people died, but it takes that to remind people why those regulations were made and why we NEED to keep them. They were, and still are, written in blood.
That’s not how it works. Electricity companies are the “deregulated” portion of your comment, all they do is provide plans, rates etc. UTILITY companies actually manage the infrastructure. Retail Electricity Providers purchase power and sell it to consumers.
Utility companies are HIGHLY regulated.
@@ccormx You're kind of arguing semantics. Utility companies are what transfer power between the regional entities at their borders. Utility companies own the transmission lines and substations that bridge Texas RE/ERCOT and its neighboring regional entities. They are the ones that enable importing of power, and regulations can limit or force that capability to import power as well as export it. Utility companies are the ones that route and switch the power to meet demand. Texas RE barely has any ability to import or export power, by design, by choice. If Texas had a regulation in place to force Texas utility companies to have higher interconnect capacity with neighboring states or even the 2nd entity in Texas, less lives would have been lost. The lack of such a regulation is why Texas RE is by far the most unreliable regional entity, it can hardly be said that they are even part of NERC due to their embarrassing reliability and compliance.
@@ccormx the utility companies were so regulated that they didn’t bother to weatherproof their equipment. They didn’t bother to sign up their powerplants as critical gas users with the gas companies. So the gas companies sent gas to residential homes instead who couldn’t use it because they didn’t have any electricity.
During all of this, the electric rates shut up by 1000 times some utilities made their entire yearly income in just a few days. Meanwhile, Texans not only had to pay for that electric, but it didn’t stay so they had to repair their homes anyway. And they’ll be paying off those billions of dollars for decades.
Adding to that is the collective stubbornness and moronic distain of receiving the slightest help further serviced their already terrible infrastructure. It's a disaster waiting to happen considering the set playing field of Texas as a whole.
I survived Hurricane Katrina & Rita in Louisiana. As a United States Marine, I survived going thru boot camp at Paris Island during the summer! BUT This was by far the worst natural disaster I had to endure in my life!! Texas let us down.
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F*CK TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
I’ve been through Hurricanes here too. I never lost power in 2021. It was only below freezing 2 days. I never turned the heater on in my house. Thermostat read “55.” That’s perfect temps for me. Tshirt weather. Born and raised right here. We’ve had way worse ice storms than 2021. I was out jogging in that 15 deg weather in 2021. It was beautiful, then hot again a couple days later. I love that cold.
We froze in Louisiana too but for some reason people only care about Texas. We were out of power for 10 days with a broken generator, car wouldn't start, no cell service or internet. I realized if I needed help I would have to walk to find it.
Kinda crazy to see disaster channels I like covering something I lived through. The slow loss of power with it flickering on and off for a while, staying off longer and longer is weirdly the part that still haunts me the most. I've always needed light and sound to sleep, so the sudden loss of both woke me up and kept me awake. It felt like an eternity just staring at my air purifier watching it occasionally come back to life only to die again, but it couldn't have been longer than an hour. Anytime the light or noise in my room flickers at night, my mind immediately jumps back to that. I already couldn't really sleep in the dark and quiet, now I can't at all.
We were able to get a generator around noon and huddled in my parent's bedroom with space heaters, electric blankets, and basically anything we could warm up with. One of my cats was upset because she refuses to eat from any bowl that isn't hers in the kitchen. We turned our water off ourselves around 24 hours in because we were afraid of pipes bursting, we didn't think dripping the faucets would be enough. They still burst when we finally turned the water on a week later, finding anyone to fix them was near impossible with how many people needed plumbers. We were reliant on bottled water for drinking and water taken from our pool for anything else. We were without power for 2.5 days and were the last in my town to get it back. Just suddenly one day after washing my hair in the kitchen sink I went back to the bedroom and the ceiling lights were on. Snow stayed on the ground for around as long as it took power to come back - I think that's the longest I've ever seen snow stay in my town since it usually melts immediately on ground contact.
I lived through this. This winter was bizarre across the nation. I moved to TX from WA and even the drive there in December, I remember every state between south WA all the way to TX was covered in a sheet of ice or snow. A month or two later, this storm hit. It was an embarrassing nightmare for the state of Texas. The state rep tried to take a vacation to the Bahamas when it hit and got pissed because his sleaziness was exposed. The richest neighborhoods were the only powered parts of cities (outside of hospitals which is expected). My friend outside of Houston got a $9k bill. And the residents were DEFENDING this. Nope. I moved back to WA the next year.
Cancun (Ted) Cruz aptly demonstrated the Texas motto which could well be "You're On Your Own Here". I cannot imagine West Coasters living through this -& why (when everyone else to the north was fine) & being satisfied with the outcome.
thank god, we dont need you here lol
Most homes here are not built for the temperatures we got during that storm. Mine doesn't have a chimney, at one point it was 5° in my bedroom because the power had been out for almost 24 hours.
the second cold night i used my sleeping bag in bed and stayed warm all night unlike the first. Its a must have imo
Liar!!
@@asrr62 stop being toxic why are the other gen alfa kids are so toxic like gee he might actually had a hard time u dont know u could be hurting someone's feelings u dont know who he is if u dont know who he is why u being so mean to him
its ok at least ur ok
Contemporary homes are so thin they practically barely count as shelter. They may protect you from the rain or snow but whatever temperature it is outside is what it will become inside without powered heating or cooling.
@@asrr62🤡🤡🤡 It must be painful being that stupid.
As a Canadian, this is so shocking to me.. it was -60c (-76F) here for a week last year and we didn’t even blink, still drove around etc. but I understand an unprepared grid caused this mess.. just crazy…
It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd learned from the two previous times it happened. But big business only cares about profits...people be damned.
@@mockgothgurlUhg, the Corporate States of America 🙄 This is beyond ridiculous....
I mean we don't even have real winter clothes down here. I wore a jacket 3 times in the past year and it was just a sweatshirt type hoodie. We don't have the infrastructure or even the basic supplies for cold
@@ShinigamisBladeYou can layer your clothes. I moved to a much hotter climate recently. Negative temperatures are rare here. So didn’t bring much of my winter clothes with me. First winter I’m here it dropped to -10 (first time in 13 years) and kept dropping to it at night for two weeks (first time on record), yet I didn’t felt cold once. Also no burst pipes, no houses on fire, no pileups, electricity and water went out a dozen of times, though. I was told by locals about possible outages, everyone was expecting it. Every building has a tank and a pump for water. Main line is drained by utility company to prevent it from bursting if freeze hits and our outdoor plumbing has a drain valve - it opens then there’s no pressure in the main. The tank, the pump and piping for them are either inside or heated. About summers, for the first time in my entire life I’ve seen words “sizzling sun” in a forecast. First summer I’ve learned, the next I was prepared. It hit 41 degrees mark two days ago by the way…
So definitely have sympathy for the children, but everything else is on people being stupid or reckless, or both.
As a Canadian my mouth was hanging open. This is just another winter Tuesday here. It’s hard to imagine how it must have felt for people to have felt it for the first time. 47 years of winters isn’t enough experience sometimes let alone zero.
Lived in Austin and walked on the night of Feburary 14th (Valentines) 2 hours in the snow and ice back to my house from my friends. Absolutely no cars were out and growing up in Austin for the majority of my life, I had never seen anything like this before. Will never forget this week of 2021.
I live here is AUSTIN TX, so here's my story.
I had lots of fun in the snow, first time ever seeing it, I had fun until one night
I was doing homework when I heard an explosion, then another, there was tons of Explosions coming from my garage (now a kitchen)
With this lights started to flicker a ton
Me and my parents run outside to see a branch fallen on a power line leaving no power in many rooms
A few days later we learned a fire started in our power box, we got lucky and it had nowhere to spread and ended, this event made me scared of going in that kitchen even again
Afterwards we had some family come over to help us, but they accidentally left a heater on and their home burnt down do to it (idk how but uh, yea)
Afterwards we had power go out for 10 mins - 1 hours each
We had out wires get fixed and the company we had moved to a nearby house
In the end it was crazy, sad, and unpredicted
As of 2024, we have fully recovered but the other people (aka the company) have not repaired their old home snd still live in the one they moved to
I learned that it’s easiest to stay warm if you lie still in bed with every blanket you own on top of you. It’s never been less than 50 degrees in my house. I had never before been so cold for so long and I hope I never feel it again.
Spoiler. You will.
As an adult, how do not know that you don't run your car in a closed garage?
I knew not to do that at like age 7 from I think my dad telling me.
You underestimate the intelligence of the average person. And then that's just the average.
It's my FREEDUMB™ to do whatever I want to stay warm while I suffer the privations my economic overlords impose on me.
-Average American
I remember this storm and it was something I have never seen before. For the past couple of years, I remembered it always getting cold around February and sometimes it will snow but most of the time it would just hail so seeing all that snow that year was shocking. At first, I thought it was just going to be a free day for school until it turned to weeks. luckily my apartment only lost power for a day but I can't say the same for some friends they lost power for weeks. I am so grateful that me and my family did not end up freezing to death during those weeks and I hope that for the families that did not make it rest in peace. Even though I like snow I hope this never happens ever again.
I live in the Midwest where cold weather like this can happen quite a bit, and If this ever happens again are some tips: Get a battery powered space heater if possible, drive slowly on the road sudden movements can send you right into a ditch or a tree. Don't go into the basement, hot air rises and the first place that'll get cold is most likely the basement.
Oh yeah. I was in TX during this. I was lucky because I had a lot of winter weather gear from living in Nebraska. We had solar panels but we're still connected to the grid and lost power with everyone else. I bundled up & mostly just stayed in bed while my landlord kept warm by the gas stove. He moved all of the salvageable food out into the snow. I managed to keep my phone charged & warmed up for a bit by heading out to the car a few mins or so a day. We made sure the exhausts were free & clear. I did have to drive about 5 or so miles to the next town over for a gas fill-up (in that rare occasion of letting my line get below a half tank - something my dad taught me not to do growing up). Lucky for me the roads were empty. Two or so days prior, the only locally owned grocer in a 10 mile radius had a line out the door and practically a block down the street. They were stuck between social distancing and huddling together to keep warm while they waited their turn to enter the store. Also lucky for me, the ATM worked because I never have cash and that's the only thing the gas stations would accept. We didn't lose water until 2 days before it was all over. Since where I was had pretty bad discolored tap water, we always already had cases of bottled water. Also, I'm a former Army medic, so I'm always minimally prepared for nearly anything. We were extremely lucky, all things considered. There were a lot of people who lived in "affordable" apts who lost everything between the storm & the building owners failing to maintain the pipes and infrastructure. That winter storm during the pandemic was a kick in the teeth for a lot of Texans. I still remember seeing pictures from people who had no lights but lived near downtown areas where all of the empty office buildings' windows brightly illuminated the sky. This is while people where dying of hyperthermia and carbon monoxide poisoning just trying to keep warm.
Meanwhile, most of the responsible parties got away with less than a slap on the wrist. I doubt ERCOT has even halfway fixed the issues from then. Ted Cruz, the TX senator took off for Cancun.
But people are going to vote these same folks in who have shown they've consistently prioritized profits with negligible concern for the plight of taxpayers, consumers, and constituents. Just thoughts and prayers.
Heartbreaking. Thanks for covering this.
my stepdad is a navy medic , so we had some mres , and he was the one who went out to drive if we needed anything . he was the only one even remotely used to that weather . it's fucked up that the people at fault barely got any sort of retribution against them .
This why, no matter what what the weather is you are accustomed to, you always prepare for the unexpected, as anomolous and exceptional events can and will happen.
And if it's happening to everyone, chances are any help won't come for you for a long while.
Not in the big star state
CERT -- Community Emergency Response Team
Just saying.
Not really an anomaly. If something happens every decade you have reason to “expect” such weather to occur in the relatively close future. Major infrastructure projects look at proofing for 1 in a 100 year, 1 in 200 year events. Relying on your own (terrible) state system and not winterising was only ever going to end one way.
Agreed. You don't just build your infrastructure for your region's average conditions, you have to have infrastructure prepared for the most extreme conditions to be expected in your area. The hottest of the hot days, the coldest of the cold days, the wettest of the wet days, the snowiest of the snowy days, and the strongest winds of your severe thunderstorms and occasional hurricanes. It may be more expensive to cover all of the bases but over the course of decades, lives WILL depend on it.
I was in the thick of it, it started on a Sunday & stayed like that for a week & it was brutal! -3 to 0 for several days straight. My parents 68 years old say they have never seen such weather here 20* and we are dying here and only at night usually. The roads turned to ice skating rings. My son I started offering free rides, gas & propane service for people. Later we started just doing medical, elderly & essential needs first. It was rewarding to help many elderly people get to loved ones & see the relief in their face. We helped who we could along the way pulling ambulances, power utility trucks up hills & stuck people trying to get basic supplies. We slept only for 4-5 hours a day, ate what we could at gas stations and kept at it my son ran the navigation and decided who was priority (he hardly turned down anyone). We ended up getting a phone call about a hospital not having enough food because delivery trucks couldn’t make the drive, so we took our clean stock trailer & ventured to make the normal 1-1/2hr trip that ended up being about 5hrs one way. Then ended making another run to another one the next day. Many others that were brave enough to drive also helped & it was nice to see our fellow Texans jump into action without being asked to! People prep now when the forecast calls for cold weather.
Thank you for this video. I didn't know what had happened and your video clarified things for me. Living through that time was a nightmare.
We barely moved into our new home when it hit. I’m originally from the Northeast and even I wasn’t prepared.
We were fortunate that we weren’t part of ERCOT (we were part of a small rural co-op) but we still lost power for eight hours. By the end of the outage, my husband was checking the temp of the water to see if we needed to winterize (shut the water to the house, drain it, and add antifreeze to all the s-pipes and toilets). We were digging out our RV antifreeze when the lights came back on.
Not sure what we would have done if it were for more than a few days. A week is crazy! Some people probably still haven’t recovered, I bet.
We have SHECO. Never happier with them because we never lost power. It never even blinked.
Co-OP's are 100% the way to go.
@@queenb67 same here. Tri-County. Never even flickered a single time. However just 1/4 mile around us, all directions, power was out for many others. The city water froze, but our family was smart enough to fill 25 5 gallon buckets with water. My internet even stayed up the entire time. Co-OPs are nice.
STOP talking STUPIDITY!!! Just LET the water run SLOWLY!!!
@@traybern I did have the water running slowly. It still froze up, but it fully froze up at the city side, water pumps froze and stopped working.
I saw this and had to watch. I lived through it. No power for four days. Luckily, we had a gas stove so were able to cook. Kept around 60 in the house, newer build. No fireplace, but we were warm with layers of clothes. Also, we called it Snowvid. We bought a generator after this, so powerful, it connects to the house so we will have heat. Never again.
Elect better people. It’s cheaper.
@@Spooky_Platypus We tried. Hot Wheels keeps winning.
@@Spooky_Platypus California isn't better, they don't even need extreme temperatures for their system to fail.
Make sure you install it properly if you just use a female to female cable to power your home from a generator, you are going to kill someone when they try to repair the power lines outside.
@@Spooky_Platypus I'd rather deal with this than live where I currently live or deal with California and the democrat policies
I work at HEB in Houston during the storm and it was terrible. We had to limit the amount of guest in the store to prevent panic buying. It was very traumatizing trying to control the hoard of people who desperately needed food and just wanted to be warm.
I remember that pile up it was near Fort Worth it was awful seeing it on the news. My inlaws JUST passed by that same road 20mins before the crashes. All of our hearts dropped on how close that was.
My older sister had just had surgery to remove cancerous vertebrae in her spine. She was at home alone with her two toddlers.... thank God she had plenty of food and they were only in the dark for a day or so.
My parents and I were so worried that we text/ called to check in with her every 4 hours
God that was one roller coaster of a period. I woke up at like 6am and went hiking in a snow covered nature reserve near my house. It was one of the most gorgeous things I've seen. I got home at around 11, took a shower, and right after we had a water pipe burst outside. While shutting out water off, my mom feel through one of the access holes, spraining her leg and getting some sort of instantaneous minor frost bite from the metal. We then immediately lost power as I was taking care of her. Took around a week to get our power back for more than an hour, and 3 weeks to get the pipe repaired. Our house got down into the high 40s in the meantime. Truly a fascinating time to live through.
I work in a chemical plant on the Texas coast. They locked us in the plant as an emergency response team. Our cooling tower turned into one massive block of ice that night. When it started thawing out it busted open a bunch of our 12” ball vales shooting the internal ball across the plant multiple times.
I live in El Paso, TX.
At times, the deep freeze didn't really impact us here in El Paso. Sure, there were some blackouts and some mishab, but overall ... it didn't impact us at all. We didn't suffer like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and other big and small cities/towns... I believe what really helps us... back in February 2010 we dealt and big freeze. Went all the way down to below negative temperature. It was so bad pipes broke out, school shut down for days, black out the entire cities. We learn alot from that time and since then we became more prepared
I have a good friend from Houston and he had gone home the weekend before the freeze, he coulda fly out cause all the airports were closed, the roads were all frozen, power was out everywhere, they had no water, he said it was scarier than any other natural disaster he had experienced, including hurricanes and tornadoes. I live the northeast where it’s normal for cold like that but in Texas, especially south Texas they don’t have anything to prevent this, no slowplows, salt trucks, and all the infrastructure wasn’t designed for it. Truly a once in a lifetime kinda event
I've been threw this deep freeze somewhat close to the Houston area. And i could tell you, having no power for few days wasn't good, My family were huddle in the living room by the fire, And I could tell you, trying to sleep in the in cold sofa, that wasn't funny at all. And wasn't expecting it being covered right now.
Kind of gives you some respect for the people who lived in the 1800s before central heating, doesn't it? Imagine what Lewis and Clark faced. I read somewhere they recorded a temperature of -44 while in North Dakota (or was it Montana?) And THEY survived...
It was crazy when this happened becuase nearly over 3 or 2 million people had lost power we still water and it was like a entire week we used fireplaces and blanketforts to keep warm then we went to out friends house so practically what happened was they were trying to start the main generator service to many homes when it happened and which froze and lost power for 6-5 days texas is a dream. rolling blackouts during the freeze we love it.
Was working at a datacenter in downtown Dallas at the time of this. We were on the hospital grid, so we weren't subject to the rolling blackouts, but our generators were on standby to voluntarily shed load as needed. One generator had a shot block heater, so we had to start it every couple of hours in order to keep it warm. It's not fun standing inside a 2mw generator enclosure when it starts up and starts sucking 7°f air through it at 40mph.
Since 2021, ERCOT has massively expanded their voluntarily load shedding programs. ERCOT pays places like datacenters, which are normally fixed loads on the power grid, to transfer over to on-site generators and each site can free up 3-5mw of electricity, enough for 3-5000 homes.
I live in Lubbock Texas I remember that winter, it was very cold. Dallas was hit the worst 😢
I don't think will ever forget it. I certainly won't. I'm from South Texas (RGV) and almost a week without heat or hot water.
I live in East Texas, out in the woods. My power somehow didn't go out, thankfully. My heart goes out to those who suffered during that time.
I use to live in Arlington, but thankfully I left 25 years ago, lol.
Because the event became milder the farther east you went. Louisiana was particularly cold that week, but not threatening all time record cold like central Texas was. Here in south Mississippi the same weather system brought us our coldest day of 2021 (highs in upper 30s, lows in low 20s), but we have similarly cold days almost every winter.
I live in East Dallas. Our power went out so we cut off the rest of the house and stayed in my sister’s room. After about a day and a half we couldn’t take it and moved to sleeping on an air mattress at my abuela’s house. I remember seeing something about the apartments downtown, how the pipes burst on top of someone’s car. The whole thing looked straight out of Geostorm, it was just a giant block of ice
I lived in Colorado City, tx, at this time- Our mayor went viral for posting on fb that if people wanted warming centers and water, they were "weak" and "wanted handouts" and then immediately resigned due to the backlash.
I worked at a trucker station- we had no power, no gas for the grills to cook food or propane to sell, and no diesel for truckers to fill up on, just regular unleaded gasoline, and if we hadn't gotten the delivery when we did we would've run out of that, too. Absolutely bonkers time.
I was in Texas during this. I was at Sheppard Air Force Base. It was -10 there, and I am from Wyoming, so I was used to it, but the infrastructure wasn't. Water pipes were bursting left and right, there were power outages, and one of the defacs had a roof collapse. There was a fire off base that the base fire department had to respond to, and that home burned to the ground because they couldn't get water on it because the hydrants were frozen.
This is still wild to me! My husband and I live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere near Sonora TX. When the freeze happened we didn’t have power for 5 days but it didn’t affect us much. We just moved our mattress to the living room in front of our big fire place and kept the fire going 24/7. We have huge stacks of wood so we didn’t even come close to running out of something to burn. We own tons of cast iron and just cooked in our fire place and tons of wild game, canned food that I can myself, huge bags of rice and potatoes, eggs from our chickens… we had plenty to eat. We just wore our insulated ranching coveralls and we own multiple quilts and down blankets. We kept so warm we had to remove a blanket or 2 at times. We also let our 5 Australian shepherds sleep with us lol. As for water, we run on well water… it’s deep underground so it didn’t freeze. We just ran our diesel generator a few times and filled huge water jugs. Bathroom was just walking out into the woods with a roll of toilet paper like camping lol. For us, it wasn’t bad at all, so when the electricity finally came back and we were able to watch the news we were shocked how bad it was in the cities. Very sad how many people suffered or lost their lives. 😢
I'm in southeast Texas. I will never forget it...I broke my kneecap two days before it hit. I was miserable, but I'm not complaining. I know others had it far worse. It was not a "rolling blackout" for me. We were without any power for several days.
i remember this so vividly, especially since it was quite recent. at the time, i was in lubbock for college, which i'm very grateful for - we were only minimally affected by the storm and grid outages. my dorm was used to freezes since lubbock gets much colder than south tx, so we just followed normal protocol. classes were paused since some ppl didn't have internet, but otherwise we were fine. meanwhile, back home, my parents were the only ones in the neighborhood who had power since my dad had multiple backup batteries. they cooked for multiple houses and multiple houses gave them meat to use since otherwise it would have perished. i'm proud of how the community came together during that time, but it breaks my heart at how awfully it was handled by the texas government. they knew about it and still did nothing. ercot absolutely sucks, and there are a billion other reasons to make sure that party is NOT in charge of texas moving forward.
Flew to San Antonio to visit my brother in college during this storm (granted it was more toward the tail end of it) but grocery stores were out of food, and hotels were just getting back powet and water. Must have been a scary new experience for all texas residents.
In houston we’re used to natural weather disasters, mainly hurricanes and floods but this freeze was some shit that not even we could’ve ever imagined… Thousands switched from electric to gas after this including myself. I think it’s safe to say our whole state has PTSD from this one.
Thank you for covering this, I can tell you researched it well. Seeing the picture of the snow in the tub instantly gave me war flashbacks to when I had to spend an hour every night for over a week shoveling snow just so my family could flush the toilets.
My neighborhood was very fortunate in that my family had a generator and we could bring our neighbors over to stay warm during rolling blackouts. Our pipes froze and burst and because we live in a rural area, we went 2 weeks without water. I had to bundle up and walk 4 houses down through snow deeper than I had ever experienced just to shower.
It was disheartening to see that the response from other states online was to make a mockery out of us for "freaking out" over single digit temperatures all while watching people die in the news. Like that is something we experience all the time like they do. This video really paints a good picture on why what happened was so tragic and the impact it had everywhere else.
Most of the suburbs around Houston had no electricity for multiple days, but downtown was lit up. All the buildings in downtown never lost power. Guess we know where we stand in the scheme of things
Its also possible some of those buildings had back up generators. I work on a corporate campus (in KS) and we had power in the freeze I asked why we were not shut down as at the time (post COVID) the place was pretty much empty except for a few businesses to make sure homes had power/heat. I was told that the campus had back up generators so they didn't need to shut down. IE they could still leach off the grid and then use the generators to keep running when the power did get throttled, while my house DID suffer a power outage (not long) but still VERY annoying.
@@rebeccaabram2312 could be, I know probably most buildings have generators. But the same doesn’t apply for traffic lights or regular street lights. Those run off the grid, and like I said everything was lit up in the downtown of Houston, like a Christmas tree.
Plus a few neighborhoods on the north side of downtown had electricity as well
Remember this November CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
Lived through this in Austin with no power or water. Managed to deal for a few days but eventually it got so cold I had no choice but to risk driving across the city with my two cats where we were finally able to warm up with a friend who had a fireplace. Worst part was that the loudspeaker fire alarms were going off the entire time and had to be covered with a pillow so I didn’t sleep for days.
My family was watching the day after tomorrow as a joke because we thought the snow storm wasn't that bad, the next day. we realized that this is no joke.
It feels so odd to me. As a Montanan, we have hard winters all the time. What hit Texas, by our standards was pathetic. But when the state is not built to handle something like this, it makes sense that it would be a disaster.
@@rolandosauceda4457lol. I’m laughing at you in Floridian. AND we have a normal power grid. Byeeee!
Grew up in New England; have now lived in Texas for 20 years. I can give some explanation of why we weren’t able to handle it as well as other states beyond what having a horrible power grid.
Our water tables are so high that we don’t have frost lines much less basements so we don’t have massive furnace radiating heat up or circulating boiling water through baseboard or radiant heating. Since we are built for heat not cold all our vents are near the ceiling (we are talking the average home has their vents 10+ ft in the air). Which is so not energy efficient when you are trying to heat a home as heat rises you basically have to heat the entire room from the ceiling down. Depending on where in the state you live there is also a high chance you don’t winterize or even if you do it’s ineffective. Take my 1968 condo for example I have single pane windows AND zero insulation, works fine for heat but not so much for bitter cold. Our roads are all concrete not asphalt so unlike roads up north that retain heat, our doesn’t as otherwise the roads would melt during the summer. We also have a really unhealthy obsession with having overpasses. Like most our major highways are completely unusable in an ice storm as you simplify can’t get on or off of them safely.
@@DeathyAS finally someone with a fucking brain, people don't seem to grasp this and just act like all the millions of people born and raised in Texas are just "fucking stupid"
@@Spooky_Platypus buddy that's not a flex your state is just as shit as you percieve texas to be
@@Spooky_Platypus The other person never even said where they were from, chill out (yes, slight pun intended).
So since ERCOT is part of the electric grid, they have sovereign immunity from any lawsuits? _Sovereign immunity - the government cannot be sued without its consent._ You cant sue the government, unless they say you can?
It is more complex than that, it is a really interesting story of why sovereign immunity is necessary for a country to function. It isn't exactly an option to shut down these companies and scrap everything to make money to pay fines, and then rebuild the system from scratch, which is what would happen in a lawsuit.
Sounds like typical American politics to me.
@@celticlass8573 Every country has their own problems. At least the us doesn't have to rely on another country for it's self defense.
@@MegaLokopo Typical clueless American pro-military BS. "Yeah we subjugate people, remove their human rights while they watch and do nothing, and have a blatantly-corrupt political system, but we have a military with a massive budget, while people die because they can't afford health care because the government doesn't want to invest in its people, so USA! USA! USA!" *Barf.*
I actually live in Fort Worth, and had by chance, ended up buying more groceries than I usually do the day before the freeze hit. Was not really affected much, except for the fact that the busses stopped running for obvious safety reasons, and none of the staff at my apartment was able to make it in. Besides the staffing issue, there was no affect on my apartments except for it being very icy, and hazardous to walk on. But, there were no power outages here, nor any water or pipe issues. Unfortunately, I did here about the loss of life on the treacherous roadways and the loss of life in the homes without power, and I do feel great sympathy for those that lost loved ones in the disaster, and fury with the "sovereign immunity" decision.
My family barely had anything to eat and had no power. luckily we had water, but so many people were not as fortunate as us.
So now I will pay respect to all who have lost their life.
I remember this storm being so cold and me and my family having no power for a week it was like being in an Ice age. I blame ERCOT for this mess.
Don’t forget to hold the government’s feet to the fire. They were so proud of being “off the grid” from the rest of the country because energy companies’ profits. This proved that maybe, just maybe, being all “I can do it ALL BY MYSELF!”, like a toddler, will bite you way harder in the ass than you expect.
Yes, the rest of the country, especially we northerners, would have said, “Tell us again how climate isn’t real and shit like this never happens”, but we’d have made sure the energy needed to keep people alive was there in the time of need.
ERCOT actually had told utilities 3 or 4 times previously about exactly this situation happening. But ERCOT doesn't have the ability to actually force the utilities to do anything about it.
My understanding is that the biggest issue was that water vapor in the natural gas supply caused gas lines to freeze, choking off the natural gas power plants that made up over half of the Texas grid. Other forms of power generation also experienced problems, but the gas lines to the power plants freezing is what made it a state wide emergency.
@@jordanledoux197, so those sub companies were the ones more concerned with profits than weatherizing the systems.
@@jordanledoux197 dont try to explain to them, they are to lazy to understand how it all works. lol people actually think they are the ones who generate and provide power. lol we are a nation of idiots.
They never mentioned the incompetence of “Governor” Greg Abbott and his major role in getting people in that situation in the first place.
this isnt a political channel. go watch some dumb communist if you wanna hear someone complain about republicans
@@HughWanztinoRight but it was still privitizations fault this happened
At least he stayed. Let’s not forget Cancun Cruz tried to bail and then blamed his kids.
One of his first acts and parroted by Cancun Cruz was to blame the outage on wind turbines to deflect gas fired plants dropping off line much, much faster than wind. If it had not been for wind generation the state would have experienced a full uncontrolled shutdown. The grid was 5 minutes from catastrophic failure. Wind allowed controlled shutdown to prevent massive damage to the grid.
And every single Texan still loves him to death & would sacrifice their children to save him.
Texans really have the same slave gene as the Russians who still love Putin.
That's why I'm Texan by birth only. I'm a Viltrumite without powers as far as I see.
I still remember this event. Watching this video has made me realized how lucky my family was when this event blew over Houston. All I had to experience was super cold weather, and a few hours worth of a power outage. I feel like I genuinely dodged a bullet seeing all the things that others had to go through that I didn’t.
I was there for this. The ice was insane. Ended up living at the hospital. Thank you for covering this, i never expected to see someone covering the horrible conditions as covid was still very real.
My sister was living in San Antonio during this event. Being a transplant from New England, she was more prepared than most who where there. Still tough going because of the loss of power and road issues.
They weren’t kidding that *everything* is bigger in Texas.
Except IQ
@@annihilation777 Good one
@@annihilation777Wow hahahhaha so funny. You must be from California.
@@arcturus4317 why don't you go kiss your daddy on the lips
@@arcturus4317California is trash
I live in the mountains of Southern California, and winter before last we had a series of blizzards that trapped everyone. Snow plows couldn’t handle snow that deep and many people were trapped. It was almost impossible to get in or out for 2 weeks. We have learned living up here to prepare to live on our own with no help for an extended period of time. You can put a tent in your living room and with sleeping bags and plenty of blankets you can stay a lot warmer than if you were in the rest of the house. We have a gas stove so we can always cook and heat up hot beverages. We also have water stockpiled in case the pipes freeze (although most of us have insulated pipes up here). We keep extra food on hand that doesn’t require cooking too. The thing is to plan on no help and expect that sooner or later something like this will happen regardless of where you live.
im north of dallas by 1 hour, and i remember the freeze so vividly. My power never went out because i live close to a hospital and that week was so fun but i also feel very guilty about having fun while other people were freezing.