Today, Explained - A tough week for Texas

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

First it was brutal winter weather, power outages followed, and then came a poorly timed trip to Cancun. Texas Public Radio’s Joey Palacios explains what comes next. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Snow in San Antonio is incredibly rare. The last time we had a significant snowfall was 1985, and that was 13 inches, so 36 years ago. So we were expecting about maybe two to three inches on Sunday. We ended up getting about four inches by about one or two in the morning, and people were on social media. They were sharing pictures. it was really cool, but things started to get really bad. My name is Joey Palacios, and I'm the local government reporter for Texas Public Radio

in San Antonio. So early Monday morning, as the snow was falling, around one or two o'clock in the morning, things started to get really bad because power started going out across the state. You know how we tell people to do things to winterize their homes, protect their pipes, so on? Well, kind of the reason we're in this situation, our power plants were not winterized

for this type of storm. Sunday night, some of the equipment and infrastructure that helps transmit all the power literally froze over and stopped working. It left our power supply about 34,000 megawatts short. infrastructure that helps transmit all the power literally froze over and stopped working. It left our power supply about 34,000 megawatts short. So right around that time, ERCOT, the manager of the state's power grid, started to issue emergency orders to utilities across the state asking people to do rolling blackouts. Because if they hadn't in that moment, the state's energy grid could have been lost.

So to offset some of the power consumption, they had to go to the utilities, do these rolling blackouts, just to put some kind of relief on the state's energy grid. And that plunged people into darkness, in some cases for more than 50, 60 hours and over the next couple of days. Every source of power that the state of Texas has, has been compromised. So at my house in San Antonio, at first I lost power for like nine minutes. But it came back on, it was up for a little bit, and then I lost power again for 15 minutes. And then it went out again, this time for two and a half hours. And then it came back, it was on for a very short amount of time, and then it went down again for another, I believe, two or three hours. And I

thought I was losing my mind because it was just, it would go up and it would go back down, go up and go back down. And so throughout the course of this first day, my power went out about 18 or 20 times and each time it was only coming up for about four to five minutes. And that's what was happening to people not just in San Antonio, but across the state as well. It got to the point where about 4 million people just did not have power. It just got to the point where the blackouts weren't rolling anymore. I would say probably around early Tuesday morning, around midnight, my power went out for the last time.

And when I say the last time, it didn't come back on until Wednesday at 1 24 and even then there were still like these occasional jumps up to power and then it would fall down again. But that was the longest I think I've ever experienced unreliable power in my life and it was cold. At first, you know, we still had the heat in the house, but then after the heat was gone, it started feeling like 34, 35, 36 degrees in my house when it's like maybe 15 degrees outside. So, people are literally freezing in their own homes throughout this energy crisis. And as this is happening, the local utilities, the state's power grid manager, ERCOT, is not giving people a definitive answer of when things are going to get back to normal. In Houston, a woman and an eight-year-old girl dying of carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was left running in a garage to help generate heat. Grandmother sleeps in her car to stay warm. Parents who ran out of firewood burn belongings

to keep their children warm. A Richardson resident watched the battery level of her partner's oxygen machine drain away and desperately sought help to have it recharged. The situation is so bad, Tara Davis is leaving the state after she, her husband, and her eight-month-old baby had to huddle around the fireplace to stay warm. They went without power for 30 hours. It was really unclear as to when things were going to be fixed because even as some of the power plants that went offline were coming back online, others were going offline. So it was like this cycle of power coming back and then losing generation capacity again. Natural gas lines were starting to freeze and some of those gas lines were powering power plants.

So for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, there was just this cycle of not knowing what was going to happen. It really wasn't until about maybe midday Wednesday that people started to see their power come back in mass. That's what ended up happening at my house. My power started coming back on around one o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, and it thankfully hasn't gone out since then. You know, for a lot of people, it was just infuriating that there was no answer coming out of when things were going to get better from the governor, from the managers of the power grid, from local utility

companies. There was a lot of blame shifting going around, a lot of finger pointings. And then Urquhart saying like, no, we're trying to restore power now. Governor Greg Abbott went on Fox News saying that, Sean, this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such as natural gas and oil and nuke. But you saw from what Trace said, and that is our wind and our solar. But wind energy isn't the majority of how the state gets its energy. Solar energy isn't the majority. Sure, we have both of those, but a lot of what the state uses is fossil fuels. Your coal, your gas, for instance. That's where a lot of these plants were going offline.

Some of the issues with Texas's plants is that they're not properly weatherized to handle this kind of problem. You know, power plants up in the north, you know, they're weatherized to withstand cold temperatures. That's not the case down here. With what was happening with wind, because some wind power did go offline, you know, the wind turbines weren't properly weatherized and they froze. It was just this very interesting debate that was coming up about green energy when Texas isn't necessarily a big green energy state. What really failed millions of Texans was the fact that things were not properly weatherized and that safeguards were not put in place years in advance that could have withstood the cold weather that was happening at the time.

So one of the things that this is shifting into is there's now a water crisis. So in San Antonio, for instance, there were instances where the power company, CPS Energy, ended up turning off water to pumping stations in the city. And so that left people without water. It was also so cold that people's pipes have busted. And so you have folks that have this gushing water and it ends up losing pressure on the system. And then the San Antonio water system can't get water pumped to higher elevations. And so even right now, we still have areas that do not have access to water because they're too high up and the water system can't pump up the water to that high elevation. So that's one crisis that

we're dealing with right now. And also, nothing is open. Even though power has been returned for much of the state, and they're not doing these rolling blackouts or calls to shed energy anymore, businesses haven't been open. Food has spoiled at restaurants, at grocery stores. Grocery stores right now are very limited in how much they can operate. We have a store here called HEB, which is nearly statewide. And that grocery store, you see pictures on social media of people waiting in incredibly long lines just to get in, of the milk aisle being completely bare, the meat aisle being completely bare, all of the bread has been sold, and there's getting to be a supply crisis of food. And so what we've seen from HEB is that they're trying to distribute

food across the state. Now, its warehouse is here in San Antonio, or one of its warehouses is. And so, last night, we saw just trucks lined up at the warehouse trying to get food to its stores, but we still were having this problem of frozen roads. People couldn't leave their houses, and I think for one of the first times people here actually felt trapped, that they couldn't leave, they couldn't go anywhere. This was catastrophic to the most epic proportions that I have ever seen. We were living in conditions that people in America just aren't really used to seeing. And it's been a disaster. Thank you. digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame.

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wearing a face mask with luggage. And then the pictures are him on the plane. And then, you know, it starts circulating that Ted Cruz and his family are going to Cancun. And so a lot of questions are rising. Here is Texas's junior senator in the US Senate, and he's leaving the state. And people are asking why.

And it takes a while for us to actually get an answer. And there's a statement that's put out that he says, My girls wanted to take a trip with their friends and frankly get somewhere. It was warmer. And Heidi and I agreed. We took them. I flew them down last night and then I just flew back today.

And that was questioned by a lot of people. Why did he need to go if his wife was going to to make sure that they got okay? How long was he actually planning on staying there? Was he going to come back immediately? Cruz was originally scheduled to return Saturday, not today. It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn't have done it. And so it became this reinvigoration, I guess, of calls for Cruz to resign. The demonstration led by a group calling itself the Election Defenders Coalition. They accused Cruz of aiding the people who stormed the Capitol 10 days ago by

joining other GOP lawmakers in objecting to the certification of the Electoral College votes. So we saw a lot of people calling on Cruz to resign then, and now... Ted Cruz has got to go! Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Those calls for Cruz to resign have reignited... Ted Cruz! Resign Ted Cruz!...as he just returned from a trip to Cancun. People are dying. For him to fly to Mexico to get his family warm shows exactly how out of touch he is. I think the national perspective on this story is a lot of people have problems with Ted Cruz and are sort of enjoying the blowback for his trip to Cancun. But as a Texan, as someone reporting on this story within the state, how does it feel in Texas? Is this about politics or is this about someone shirking their responsibilities in the middle of a crisis? I think what people

want right now is they want their leaders to do something. And to see somebody leaving the state when many people just don't have that opportunity, I think that's what's causing a lot of the anger right now that, you know, not everybody has the ability to just get up and leave. You know, there are folks that do have their own responsibilities here. They have to take care of their families. They have to take care of their pets. They can't leave them in the freezing cold that people are experiencing here. Here you see somebody that was elected to power within the state leaving where millions of people are still struggling for power and for water. The weather is slightly improving in Texas, but are you saying that the struggle

for resources and energy isn't over yet? This is a layered crisis. Power is back for a good number of people, not everybody yet. But now we have this water crisis where we don't know how long it's going to take for boil water notices to be removed, because much of the state is under a boil water notice right now. And that varies throughout the water utilities of the state. People don't have water pressure. You turn on the faucet in some homes and it's just a trickle. Or you turn it on and nothing comes out at all. People have busted pipes that are going to need costly repairs now. And, you know, it's Friday. We're supposed to thaw out now. Things over the weekend are going to get better temperature-wise. When Monday comes back,

I think it's going to be about 70 degrees, which just shows how volatile and unpredictable Texas's weather can be. But one of the issues that we're still going to be dealing with is, are grocery stores going to have enough food for people? How long is it going to take the shelves to get restocked? You know, there was an image here out of San Antonio where a Domino's pizza had enough food to go through the weekend, but they sold out of it in four hours just because so many people were trying to find places they were open so they could get a hot meal. And this is while folks, many of them still didn't have power. There's going to be a long period of recovery, even on top of still the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Texas exceptionally hard. And the cold weather,

the closed roads have basically made it to where vaccine campaigns that were going on had to pause for like four days. Appointments are having to be rescheduled. And in some cases where even though roads were impassable, they still said, if you can make it to this appointment for your vaccine, please show up because these vaccines are about to go bad. We have to use them. Is anyone owning this? Is the governor owning this? Are local governments owning this? Are the utilities owning this? I mean, something went terribly wrong here. And it sounds like throughout the week, there was a lot of blame game happening. The Green New Deal got thrown under the bus, even though as far as I know, that's not law anywhere. At this point,

at the end of the week, with dozens of Texans dead and thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more struggling, has anyone said, this is our bad, we own this? There's still a lot of finger pointing happening. A lot of the blame seems to be going on ERCOT, but a lot of the blame could potentially just go on years of not properly preparing for a disaster like this. Now, as I mentioned, some power plants just aren't weatherized for this kind of cold. And there's going to be a lot of investigation into what happened. Hopefully, there's going to be some very strong systemic change where this doesn't happen again. I know this was a wild weather system, but should the state government or ERCOT have seen this coming? It seems like, yeah. This happened about 10 years

ago too, where we had a huge cold snap and ERCOT had to issue rolling blackouts as well, but those only lasted a few hours. They started early in the morning, and I want to say by like noon that things had returned to normal when we got above freezing. And it snowed back then too. This was 2011, so almost 10 years to the day. And that's when ERCOT started getting under fire from legislators, but nothing happened. Do you think this time will change things? I mean, this time feels different. This time, more people died. This time, more people were stranded, more people ran out of options. And of course, this time, one of your senators took a trip to Cancun that got him in a lot of heat. This is something that people are never

going to forget. This is going to go down as probably the worst energy crisis that Texas has ever faced. You know, one of the things about Texas is it prides itself on being kind of energy independent. Our power grid is separate from the rest of the country. I mean, ERCOT has about maybe 90% of the state when it comes to power generating, but the two east and west coast power grids that are completely separate from ERCOT, the third power grid, actually have small portions of Texas contained. Like the western grid has El Paso. El Paso didn't have these kinds of outages. One of the things, because Texas is its own energy island, is that it can't really borrow power from the east and west grids. Other states can share energy between each other that kind of

prevents something like this, or at least mitigates something like this. But Texas doesn't have that ability because ERCOT is an island of an energy grid. Texas is a very proud state. It likes to consider itself independent on a lot of things and there was a statement that Rick Perry, our former governor and the former energy secretary, made that Texans would rather be in the cold than have more federal regulation. And I feel like if you talk to a lot of Texans that just got out of not having power for days, they may think a little differently. I think it's awakened a lot of people to the scope of politics within the state. You know, ERCOT was this obscure, little-known agency that now is on the lips and minds of every single person in this state.

Most people just really didn't even know what ERCOT was, And I don't think a lot of people knew that we are just our own independent energy grid. And it's probably a little too early to say like what those conversations will lead to, but I could imagine that there will be a lot of requests for reform. And even the governor himself, who has received a lot of ire from people, a lot of anger, has put reform of ERCOT on an emergency item for the legislative agenda. So I think as things move on and as we get out of this crisis, that there is going to be a lot of public demand for change. Thank you so much for listening, rating, reviewing, sharing, crying, laughing, critiquing, hating, emailing, tweeting, recommending, and letting us be a part of your life. The team includes Amina Alsadi, Muj Zaydi, Will Reed, Cecilia Lay, Halima Shah, Noam Hassenfeld, and Afim Shapiro. Shoutouts to alumni, Golda Arthur, Bird Pinkerton, Bridget McCarthy, Luke Vanderplug, and Irene the Dream Noguchi.

Facts checked by Lulu Orozco-Perez. Jillian Weinberger is our senior birthday advisor, and Vox's editorial director of podcasts is Liz Kelly Nelson. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.