Frustrations are mounting across southeast Texas as residents enter a fourth day of crippling power outages and heat, a combination that has proven dangerous – and at times deadly – as some struggle to access food, gas and medical care.
More than 1.3 million homes and businesses across the region are still without power after Beryl slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, leaving at least 11 people dead across Texas and Louisiana.
Many residents are sheltering with friends or family who still have power, but many can’t afford to leave their homes, Houston City Councilman Julian Ramirez told CNN. And while countless families have lost food in their warming fridges, many stores are still closed, leaving government offices, food banks, and other public services scrambling to distribute food to underserved areas, he said.
It’s a bigger economic problem than people are talking about. I have a manager who works from Houston. He can’t work right now. Several other coworkers as well.
At some point, employers will have to consider the liability of employing someone in Texas, simply because a power outage could seriously impact them.
So Texas and Florida are out?
Florida, all the craziness aside, is actually part of the national grid and, like the other commenter said, usually rebounds quickly.
Texas OTOH keeps insisting their independent unconnected grid is superior, even though the evidence is stacking quite tall against that claim. If it’s not a hurricane, it’s the heat. If it’s not the heat, it’s the cold. If it’s not the cold, it’s the wind.
It’s always SOMETHING with their grid, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with their insistence that their grid be independent. It’s all the WoKeNESs that’s the problem!!! /s
Although being disconnected from the national grid is a problem. This isn’t the problem this time.
This was poor preparation and response by the city and power company. We haven’t had proper tree trimming around power lines and there weren’t repair crews staged for this. Not to mention trees dying off from extreme heat/cold then being blown down.
You don’t say? Maybe if there were some sort of rules to ensure proper procedures are in place AND being followed. Like regulations or something hmmm
I agree. I’d fucking love that.
A tree shouldn’t be taking the entire grid down…this sounds like regurgitated Facebook bs
“A tree” didn’t “take the entire grid down.” A hurricane and thousands of trees took thousands of power lines down, and there are many localized outages interspersed between areas that still have power. “The grid” is fine, individual neighborhoods’ connections to the grid are not.
The grid is only fine right now because of decreased load due to outages. When everyone has power again and the load increases they’ll have a different set of problems they’ll end up blaming on FEMA, green energy and hurricanes.
That makes no sense. The Texas grid hasn’t had any issues with balancing electricity supply and demand since the winter storm in '21 that took a bunch of generating facilities offline
A whole 4 years of stability! I stand corrected that’s a such a long and outstanding record that I should feel shame for doubting or capability after being involved in several deaths then and several more now.
People are downvoting every comment that recognizes this has nothing to do with ERCOT. They heard about ERCOT in 2021 and eagerly blame it for every power-related issue in Texas, apparently
Yup this is the city and Centerpoint that should be on the hook for this
At the same time, let’s recognize this was a hurricane, which would have similarly knocked out power in any metro area, and would’ve taken a few days to fix in any metro area. Centerpoint didn’t pre-stage outside assistance like they should have though, but to their very small credit, Beryl’s track changed dramatically from projections over the final 72 hours before landfall
Florida rebounds really quick after a hurricane. I do have coworkers in Florida, at most they are out for a day or two.
It’s been 4 so far for Houston. And I’m not talking a hurricane which won’t impact most of the state, I’m talking about any power outage across the state.
I meant Florida is out because most housing insurance companies are leaving the state because they’re losing too much money there.
This is an anecdote that doesn’t hold water if you look search for articles about outages in Florida after hurricanes
Yeah, red states are very poor, mostly due to their backwards economic policies. I know someone is going to being up that Texas is actually rich over all, but they still have far worse wealth disparities and widespread poverty than a comparable state like California. So they are indeed still a very poor state.
This poverty is a huge liability. It’s all fun and games complaining about how the gov wrecks everything until you need something like well regulated utilities.
Poverty is always a liability. In the healthcare system, poverty raises the costs for everyone else when they don’t get things treated or prevented.
What bothers me is that there is a whole bunch of financial types who seem to blissfully ignore liabilities. “Those are unrealized costs,” when it should be “those are ticking time bombs.” If you don’t mitigate liabilities like through well regulated utilities those ticking time bombs will always have bigger consequences when they ARE realized.
That’s a problem for the next guy once I get my paycheck and leave in 2 years. Repeat ad nauseum.
The company I work for has a production and shipping facility down near Houston that has been closed down since Monday due to the lack of power. It’s insane.
A lot of inertia at the scale of the bulk of the petrochemical industry.
I would not hold my breath. Businesses will simply throw technology at the problem until they can’t see it anymore. Was just in a meeting today where the boss was raving about satellite phones solving our connectivity issues.