What happened
Texans faced more than $20 billion in
damage and a rising death toll this week,
after a winter storm overpowered the
state’s electrical grid and left millions with-
out heat and electricity for days in temper-
atures that plunged into the single digits.
Desperate residents huddled in beds and
cars and burned furniture to stay alive.
“It was 10 degrees. There’s only so many
covers you can use,” said Tosha Hender-
son, an aunt of three kids in Houston.
More than 60 deaths were reported from
hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning,
and other related causes—a number that
authorities said was certain to grow. After
most power was restored, residents still faced gasoline shortages,
empty supermarket shelves, and the need to boil drinking water;
thousands faced extensive home damage from burst water pipes.
“So many things have broken down on so many levels,” said Chris
Colvin, the director of a medical center near Killeen, where work-
ers couldn’t flush toilets or wash their hands.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially blamed the fiasco on frozen
wind turbines and “the Green New Deal.” That claim was widely
mocked, since in winter, Texas gets about 10 percent of its power
from wind. The real culprit, energy experts say, was Texas’
uniquely unregulated energy market, which doesn’t require provid-
ers to winterize their systems or maintain a power reserve. Frigid
temperatures froze natural gas wells and pipelines as well as wind
turbines, and shut down a nuclear reactor after the water supply
froze. Experts who’d long warned of such a crisis said the state’s
anti-regulation Republican leadership had reaped what it sowed.
“They all chose cheap over reliable,” said University of Houston
energy economics professor Ed Hirs. “And they got it.”
What the editorials said
As his constituents shivered, Abbott turned to “political games,”
said the Houston Chronicle. The real problem was not wind tur-
bines, but an unregulated system that maximizes profits and keeps
prices low “by failing to insure against a crisis like this one”—a
vulnerability he and other state officials had been warned of since a
similar ice storm and blackouts in 2011.
“Frozen windmills are not exclusively to
blame,” said The Washington Examiner,
but the vulnerability of green energy
shouldn’t be glossed over. President Biden
and his administration are pointing to a
utopian future where fossil fuels are “re-
placed by windmills and rainbows.” But
the abrupt cut in wind power last week
is a reminder that wind and solar can’t
be exclusively relied upon—and that the
future that progressives envision “is a lot
colder and darker than they admit.”What the columnists said
This was a “perfect free-market storm”
of Republican incompetence, said Cliff
Schecter in TheDailyBeast.com. The needless death and suffer-
ing were a logical result of a free-market “fetish” that has gripped
the GOP since the Reagan era, leading to the 2008 meltdown of
derivatives and banks, opposition to Obamacare and Medicaid,
and the disastrous handling of the pandemic. Thirty-five years after
Reagan, the “nine most terrifying words in the English language
may be ‘I’m a Republican politician and I run your government.’”Don’t exaggerate, said Ryan Rusak in the Fort Worth Star-
Telegram. Yes, the state was caught flat-footed by the unusually
cold weather, and it’s clear our power plants must be winterized.
But as liberals loll in “the warm bath of schadenfreude,” let’s
remember that one awful week “doesn’t negate decades of prudent
governance” that have brought both people and businesses flocking
to Texas from heavily regulated states like California. “Cheap and
abundant” energy and low taxes have fueled growth that “im-
proves lives in ways no government program ever can.”The Texas crisis “carries a profound warning,” said Christopher
Flavelle in The New York Times. It points to “the risks posed by
increasingly extreme weather to America’s aging infrastructure.”
Prolonged heat waves, droughts, flooding, and arctic cold snaps—
all more likely because of climate change—are putting growing
stress on drinking-water systems, electrical grids, sewer systems,
and mass transit. The past is “no longer a safe guide” for what
lies ahead, said Alice Hill, a former risk assessor for the National
Security Council. “We are colliding with a future of extremes.”Tamir^ Kalif
a/The
New^ YorkTimes/Re
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an^SivleyA family burning furniture in frigid AustinTHE WEEK March 5, 2021
4 NEWS
Texans freeze as power grid fails
It wasn’t all bad QAs a historic storm left Texans stranded on icy roads, Ryan
Sivley came to the rescue with “The Beast”—his 2010 Chev-
rolet Silverado. Sivley strapped cars using hooks and chains
to the back of his pickup truck, towing more than 400 people
to safety and taking some all the way to their destination.
When Sivley saw how impassable the roads were, he turned
to driving health-care work-
ers to and from hospitals
and relocating people who
didn’t have water or elec-
tricity, including an 82-year-
old woman with dementia
who lived alone. “He
basically saved Sharon’s
mother’s life,” said Sharon’s
boyfriend John Hamilton.
“There was no other way
to get her out of there.”QA volunteer and a senior living
in St. Paul have formed a friend-
ship through the pandemic. Nick
Dyer, founder of a volunteer
network called Rosewater Service
Corps, picks up groceries for Bar-
bara Matthews, 90. One day after
seeing Matthews waving from
the window, Dyer realized he was
there to offer more than just gro-
ceries. “It’s companionship,” Dyer
said. In conversations through a
window Dyer learned how Mat-
thews lived through the bombing
of London in WWII. “I realize now
in these times of the pandemic, I
think this often brings out the best
in people,” Matthews said.QThis past Valentine’s Day, a Chicago
woman’s husband slipped on the wed-
ding band that she lost nearly 50 years
ago. In 1973, Karen Autenrieth lost her
ring in the snow outside her grand-
mother’s house. This year, a woman
who now lives at that house posted
a note on Facebook that she’d found
a ring six years ago. She tagged two
Chicago historians, who took up the
challenge. Using the inscription “RA
to K.B. 4-16-66” engraved in the ring,
they searched genealogy sites and
archives to track down Autenrieth and
her husband, Robert—who will cel-
ebrate their 55th anniversary in April. Rescue vehicleIllustration by Fred Harper.
Cover photos from AP, Getty, APThe main stories...