Jasmine Williams struggled for three days amid Texas’ intense winter storm with icy temperatures and constant power outages. When she woke up on Wednesday with the sound of a distant hum, she thought she would finally have her electricity restored.
Instead, the Dallas resident realized that her entire apartment was under an inch of water and that more was uncontrollably seeping through the walls.
“I realized it was not a leak,” the 22-year-old dancer told BuzzFeed News. “The pipe burst.”
Williams recorded her shocking discovery in a TikTok that has been viewed more than 1.3 million times since then. In the video, she slides through water in her apartment and cries as she tries to assess the damage.
“What the fuck?” she says in the video. “That shit floods in for no fucking reason.”
Like many Texans, Williams faced devastating winter weather that weakened entire communities, closed roads, and people struggled for basic supplies. At least ten people have been killed in the storm, and vulnerabilities within the state’s power grid have also left millions without electricity. Icy conditions now cause water pipes to freeze and burst.
Residents were told to stay off the roads. Williams’ own car could not climb a hill and got stuck in the snow at the exit of her apartment complex. As a result, she could not go to work for almost a week.
On Wednesday, Williams, who was sleeping under a mountain of blankets to stay warm, woke up around 12:00 – only to find that her apartment was flooded.
“I thought maybe I left the sink or something,” she said.
Instead, she said, she found that most of the water sprayed from a hole in her kitchen wall. Workers from the apartment complex repaired the wall weeks ago, leaving a gaping hole. When the pipe burst, cold water began to spray into her apartment.
According to her, water also seeped into a neighbor’s apartment and it took two hours before it was turned off.
It soaked everything on the floor: her furniture, a pile of laundry, the suitcases for her saxophone and trumpet.
“I have not even opened it yet. I’m scared,” she said in another TikTok video showing the scene.
She said she is not sure when she can go back to work as many businesses and roads remain closed during the storm. She started a GoFundMe page trying to cover the cost of the damage.
Williams, who grew up in Dallas, said she had seen the city covered in snow before, but this storm was something completely different.
“It was not so,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a very different state. My family also comes from Iowa, and I feel serious out there.”
After the flood on Wednesday, she left the apartment – which still had no electricity – to stay with her grandparents who had power during the storm. She does not know what condition her house will be in when she returns.
“It’s just something we were not prepared for as Texans,” Williams said.