Winter happened here in Austin and across the state. Electricity failed. Water failed. Natural gas failed. It started Sunday night the 14 February, but warning had been issued some days before. On Thursday the 11th in a conference all at work, I warned my co-workers to be prepared for another winter storm. We had an event here in Austin in January. A mere inch or two of snow paralyzed the town for a couple of days. It happens every so often. This time, our home was very, very lucky in that our one-mile square still had electricity through all of this. And we are not out of the crisis, yet. We are still under a "boil water" notice. Yesterday many neighborhood grocers, including Walmart, were not open. Those that were had bare shelves. With the roads impassable, everything stopped. Even so, our house was prepared, and we are still more or less fine with plenty of food and still with 2 gallons of bottled water unused. I boiled two gallons yesterday as back-up. Emergency preparedness is a habit. It is interesting and somewhat scary to see how this played out. The governor immediately released a statement that he would find someone to blame. Sen Ted Cruz went to Cancun. As for deeper problems, the reason that the water ran out here in Austin is that we do not have basements, so we have no way to shut off the outside taps. When it gets below freezing, we open the faucets and let them drip. A million people did that for three days until there was no more water. For ourselves, again, aside from the general "Galt's Gulch" mentality, I have been through quite a bit of specialized training including CERT: Community Emergency Response Team. Every town has the training. Typically, it runs once a week, two hours a night, for 14 weeks. More on my blog. https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2021/02/winter-happened.html (Edited by Michael Marotta on 2/22, 5:34am)
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