A frigid blast of winter weather across the US on Monday plunged Texas into an unusually icy emergency that knocked out power for more than 2 million people, shut down grocery stores and air travel and sent vehicles skidding on dangerously snowy and slick roads.
The worsening conditions halted the delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine shipments. Massive power outages across Houston included a facility storing 8,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, and health officials scrambled to find takers at the same time as authorities were pleading for people to stay at home.
Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on, as the state’s overwhelmed power grid throttled into rotating blackouts that are typically only seen in 38°C summers.
Photo: AP
The storm was part of a massive system that brought snow, sleet and freezing rain to the southern Plains and was spreading across the Ohio Valley and to the Northeast.
The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states, called for rolling outages because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted.
Some utilities said they were starting blackouts, while others urged people to lower power usage.
“We’re living through a really historic event going on right now,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.
State officials said that soaring demand and cold weather knocking some power stations offline had pushed Texas’ system beyond its limits.
“This weather event, it’s really unprecedented. We all living here know that,” said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
He defended preparations made by grid operators and described the demand on the system as record-setting.
“This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. And so that is really the result that we’re seeing,” Woodfin said.
The largest grocery store chain in Texas, H-E-B, closed locations around Austin and San Antonio, cities that are unaccustomed to snow and have little resources to clear roads.
The slow thaw and more frigid lows ahead was also taking a toll on Texas’ distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
State health officials said Texas, which was due to receive more than 400,000 additional vaccine doses this week, now does not expect deliveries to occur until at least today.
The weather also put existing vaccine supply in jeopardy.
Rice University on Monday abruptly began offering vaccines on its closed Houston campus after Harris Health System told the school it had about 1,000 vaccines that “were going to go to waste,” university spokesman Doug Miller said. “The window was just a couple hours. They have to take care of it quickly,” Miller said.
A Harris County Public Health facility storing the vaccines lost power between 1am and 2am on Monday and its backup generator also failed, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
The Louisiana Department of Health on Monday evening announced the state’s first storm-related death after a 50-year-old Lafayette Parish resident slipped on ice and fatally hit his head on the ground, while two people died in separate crashes in Kentucky on Monday.
“Do not get on these roads. These roads are extremely hazardous and dangerous now,” Kentucky Secretary of Transportation Jim Gray told a news conference.
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