AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Many of the millions of Texans who lost power for days after a deadly winter blast flooded the power grid have now returned, but the crisis is far from over in parts of the South. with many people not being safe drinking water.
More than 190,000 homes and businesses were left without power on Friday morning, down from about 3 million two days earlier, according to poweroutage.us, though utility officials said the limited eclipses are still possible.
The storms also left more than 330,000 people from Virginia to Louisiana without power, and about 71,000 in Oregon still experienced a week-long outage after a huge ice and snowstorm.
The snow and ice moved in the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, and later in the northeast as the extreme weather was blamed for the deaths of at least 58 people, including a farmer in Tennessee who tried to save two calves that apparently wandered in a frozen pond and a 17-year-old girl from Oklahoma who was trapped in a frozen pond fell.
A growing number of people have perished and are trying to warm up. In and around the western Texas city of Abilene, authorities said six people died of the cold, including a 60-year-old man who was found dead in his bed in his icy home. In the Houston area, a family died of carbon monoxide when their car drove into their garage.
Utility programs from Minnesota to Texas made role-playing to reduce stress. But the remaining Texas outages were mostly weather-related, according to the state’s network manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Bob Fenton, acting administrator of the federal emergency management agency, said Friday teams were in Texas with fuel, water, blankets and other supplies.
“What worries me the most is making sure people stay warm,” Fenton told CBS This Morning as he urged people without heat to go to a shelter or heating center.
Rotating outages for Texas could return as electricity demand rises as people get power and heat again, said Dan Woodfin, senior director of systems industry.
Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas warns residents “not out of the woods”, with temperatures still well below freezing across the country, south of central Texas, threatened by a winter storm and disruptions in food supply chains.
Add to that the misery: the weather has endangered drinking water systems. Authorities have ordered seven million people – a quarter of the country’s second largest state – to boil tap water before drinking it, following record-breaking temperatures that damaged infrastructure and pipes. In Abilene, a man who died in a health care facility when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.
Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said water pressure dropped after lines froze and because many people had taps drip to prevent pipes from icing. Abbott urged residents to shut off water to prevent more pipes and maintain municipal system pressure.
President Joe Biden said he called Abbott Thursday night and offered additional federal government support to state and local agencies.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said residents will likely have to boil tap water in the fourth-largest U.S. city by Sunday or Monday.
Federal emergency officials have sent generators to support water treatment plants, hospitals and nursing homes in Texas, along with thousands of blankets and ready-to-eat food, officials said. The Texas Restaurant Association coordinated food donations to hospitals.
Two of the Houston Methodist community hospitals had no running water and were still treating patients, but most non-emergency surgeries and procedures were canceled for Thursday and possibly Friday, spokeswoman Gale Smith said.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 1,000 public water systems in Texas and 177 of the state’s 254 provinces reported weather-related disruptions, affecting more than 14 million people, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
About 260,000 homes and businesses in Tennessee’s largest province, including Memphis, have been told to boil water after cold temperatures led to water breaks and problems at pumping stations. Memphis International Airport canceled all incoming and outgoing passenger flights on Friday due to water pressure issues.
According to flightaware.com, more than 300 flights to and from Dallas and Houston have been canceled in Texas. American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, was particularly affected.
In Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said most of the city of about 161,000 were without water Thursday night. Crew pumps pumped water to refill city tanks, but had a shortage of chemicals to treat the water.
“We have a huge challenge getting more water through our distribution system,” Lumumba said.
About 85 elderly people in an apartment building in Jackson lost a water service on Monday and relied on deliveries from a building manager, resident Linda Weathersby said.
Weathersby went outside to fetch buckets of ice to melt it so she could flush her toilet and said, “My back hurts now.”
Before the wintry weather moved away from Texas, the city of Del Rio received 25.4 cm of snow along the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, surpassing the city’s one-day record for snowfall.
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Acacia Coronado is a member of the Corps for the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to cover covert issues.
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Associated Press journalists Jake Bleiberg in Dallas, Ken Miller in Oklahoma City and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed.