Texas responded by ordering more reports. The warning came with a detailed to-do list. “And when they do,” investigators concluded, “the cost in terms of dollars and human hardship is considerable.” Texas went on notice in 2011, after the last polar locomotive crashed the state’s natural-gas and coal-fired power plants for days: Armor those plants and the natural-gas system against the cold, the warning went, and do it soon – because this will happen again when more severe cold snaps arrive. The collapse of Texas was more a result of habitual neglect, the predictable – predicted – consequence of a catastrophic failure to heed a plain warning a decade ago. In the language of law, what happened was a force majeure, an unpredictable, unavoidable “act of God.”īut it wasn’t. Some places, such as data centers, could not get diesel for backup generators. Whole cities were under boil-water orders. Water failed, too, as pipes and mains burst, and treatment and pumping stations lost power. But the real proof huddled behind closed doors: millions without electricity and therefore without heat, some in grave danger, some desperately seeking warmth in their running cars, only to die from carbon monoxide poisoning.Īt the worst, about 4 million households, businesses, and institutions, most in the biggest metro areas, were in the cold and dark. Evidence of disaster lay across much of a state in shock: snow, ice, and single-digit cold.
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