As a brutal winter storm pumped much of Texas, Cecilia Corral posted social media posts written by other Austinites. From single mothers and their newborns, others in her hometown were freezing without heat or in need of food.
“Yesterday, I lost count of the number of times I cried out from what I saw,” said Corral, co-founder and vice president of product at CareMessage, a nonprofit platform and com -participating patients with a focus on less medical areas.
Millions of Texans found themselves cold and in the dark on Tuesday, suffering and dying incessantly in a state that provides almost the largest electricity in the country, but somehow lost control of it. their own power grid in the middle of a harsh winter. Among the accident, pictures of a city illuminated horizon circulated on social media, sparked outrage, and highlighted how economically disadvantaged families and individuals of color should be a major concern of senior management.
“Not today.” It is not just this crisis. It’s a matter of urgency, “said Natasha Harper-Madison, Austin’s chief executive. “These are the kinds of differences that we usually see all the time. They just happen to be expanded because of the crisis. “
As sub-freezing temperatures and inches of snow shocked Texans in the past few days, cranked thermostats were battling the harsher operating conditions at power plants. With skyrocketing demand for energy and supply declining, the Texas Electric Trust, which regulates the flow of electric power for most of the state, began trying to handle about 34,000 megawatts of power gone. to lose.
But emergency infrastructure was free of the black areas in the long run, benefiting residents in the more dense, affluent areas that will typically be home to these services, and providing disadvantage poor communities forced into neighborhoods where these resources are scarce.
In Austin, the state capital, widespread blackouts have further fueled the federal “racial and economic divide,” Harper-Madison said.
Images of Austin’s swanky decline – held online to support warming centers, a local hospital, government buildings, etc. – showed up with the black spaces around it. In Dallas, skyscrapers light up in Christmas red and hot pinks for Valentine’s Day this long weekend, wiping out federal power, and Houston’s office buildings were likewise shining Monday night and the locals shone in their homes.
Initially, a continuous power outage should have lasted a few minutes, but as the power grid established, they have extended far beyond those expectations, sometimes for days. “The current situation is not – completely – contagious. There is no excuse for this, ”said Varun Rai, director of the University of Texas Energy Institute.
As houses and flats turn cold, hundreds of Texans use life – threatening methods such as grills, cars or generators for heat and they fall seriously ill from carbon monoxide poisoning, including a woman and girl who died in Houston.
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