Slowly We Awaken: As of Thursday (Feb. 18) at 2pm, Austin Energy reported that power had been restored to all but around 50,000 customers, but could not predict when those would be restored or if further outages would be required. “I wish bringing everyone back on line was as easy as pushing a button or flipping a switch, but it’s not,” said AE General Manager Jackie Sargent.
Texas Almost Blew It: Electric grid operator ERCOT told reporters Texas avoided a catastrophic, grid-destroying blackout – and weeks or months without power – by minutes, maybe seconds, early Monday morning. ERCOT said Thursday that enough power has been restored to the grid to avoid further long-term outages, though rolling blackouts were still possible.
And It’s Still Snowing: The power crisis won’t be completely resolved until the winter storms end. The last round of expected snow and freezing temperatures arrived in Austin on Thursday. By midday Friday, temperatures are expected to rise to a balmy 40 degrees; normal temps should return by Sunday.
Boil Water Notices are, on Thursday, still in effect for the entire Austin Water service area as well as several suburban water suppliers. The combination of power cuts to treatment plants (all restored in Austin, the utility says) and water main breaks has led to dangerous low water pressure throughout the systems.
The Most at Risk: Several deaths related to the freeze have been reported; the worst impacts won’t be known until the city thaws out. Warming centers and cold water shelters are mostly full with several thousand Austinites (including those living unhoused) with nowhere else to go; mutual aid efforts have helped hundreds more avoid freezing to death. Residents are urged to not light fires outside fireplaces to avoid injuries from either flames or carbon monoxide.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-YOLO) decided this was a great time to biff off to sunny Cancun. The whole state and nation came together in sweet bipartisan unity to drag Cruz to hell and back; on Thursday, he took a Flight of Shame back to Houston after blaming his pre-teen daughters for the bad idea. Did Senator Sedition lambaste Austin Mayor Steve Adler for his ill-timed trip to Mexico last fall? Of course he did!
More GOP “Leadership”: As the Chronicle‘s Austin Sanders first reported, Matt Mackowiak, chair of the Travis County Republican Party and founder of the Save Austin Now group seeking to restore criminal penalties for camping in public, posted to Facebook this call to Abandon Austin Now mid-crisis: “If you want to go to Miami on private charter from Austin tomorrow, text me ASAP. Splitting up cost.”
Quote of the Week
“Due to the severity of weather and the condition of the @ERCOT_ISO grid, rotating outages in the Austin Energy area are lasting longer than the expected 40 minutes.”
– Tweet sent by Austin Energy at 3:30am, Feb. 15. The catastrophic grid failure left more than 4 million households statewide without power for days.
This article appears in February 19 • 2021.