Didn’t expect to see a disaster that I actually lived through on this channel. I remember my dad burning scrap wood in the fireplace so we could stretch our firewood supplies, and moving all the food in the fridge into the snow so it wouldn’t go bad. Crazy times.
Same. In Dallas, and didn’t have it near as bad as some. Neighbors in my apartment complex came together to help each other out with water, batteries and flashlights, food, and use of microwaves (the buildings that had power. At the very least, I love that we came together as a community.
It makes me sad that it isnt common sense. Something similar happened in upstate NY, I believe where a woman died from carbon monoxide poisoning because she slept in her car, but she didnt check to see if her exhausts were blocked by the snow. They were.
It's equally sad that there are states that don't have a carbon monoxide alarm mandate. There are just so many things with this whole situation that could have saved so many lives.
@@ScaredyGinge This happened in the garage though. I don't know any states that have carbon monoxide alarms in the garage, seeing as, it's the garage. With cars that give off carbon monoxide.
You can't have this story without mentioning mattress Mack ( you even used a picture). He let hundreds and hundreds of people into his stores to sleep,eat and stay warm. He's truly an angel ❤.
Mattress Mack is absolute a trash excuse for a human when you actually learn how he treats people when there's no good publicity in it for him. Ask anyone who's worked for him. His abuse and dehumanization of his workers-in public-is legendary.
I thank the creators of this video for not sugar coating this disaster. The massive vehicle pileup was particularly disturbing, but something we need to see.
My co worker lived right by the highway. He said that all of a sudden he started hearing the sounds of tires squealing, cars crashing and screaming. He called 911 and he was told help was on the way. He heard this go on for hours. He said that’s the scariest thing ever.
I’ve had people in other states comment how all us Texans were mad that the don’t know how to drive their big trucks in the snow, when in all honesty I told them that Texas homes are built to keep us cool, not to keep us warm. Not to mention my nephew was not even a year old, other states people just don’t understand how horrific it was to be in it. Other people said that they “didn’t think it was that serious lol” but 92 is considered a heat wave where they live
@@Wontreplyeverdontbother black ice was the culprit and it happens up North as well. Can't see it until you're on top of it. Road conditions can change from wet to frozen in a space of a quarter mile (or less).
this was the one time that living in a tiny, crappy, run down apartment actually wound up working in my favor. it's a lot easier to keep a tiny room warm.
@@CassandraYreally have to live a life to learn to count your blessings. Many don't understand that concept. They live life, even successfully, yet lessons fly right over their heads.
yup, holed up in a room with every blanket in the apartment, layers, and another warm body. my apartment dropped to 36 degrees in the first night and i spent about 80-90% of the time without power and having to drive around the city to find some sort of food was so difficult, we were not prepared at all.
Had thick blankets on the door frame and windows, thick blankets over all the mattresses in living room floor, had thicker blankets tied off the hallways and stayed in room. Didn't know why they hell I collected blankets all my adult life until that day. Glad I was a blanket hoarder.
Yep i did the same. Used my grill to heat up bricks and then had the bricks in pots and pans in the room with me to radiate heat. Showed the trick to my neighbors and warned them about running grills or cars indoors. People panic in moments like that and make foolish choices. Gotta look out for each other. It was really sad when i got power back to go online and see all the cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.
i think it's genuinely insane that someone could call saying they heard their family member faint over the phone, suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, and no sense of urgency was used to save a family with reported children inside........
@@El_Presidente_5337 Exactly! Like _WTF_ is a wellness check good for anyway!?! They might as well have just drove by slowly, yelled "Aye! Anybody there!?" Not even getting out, and as they roll past the house 2 seconds later, just drive off and been like "Yup. We did a damn fine job on that one, boys! Let's go get breakfast!"
Another Ft. Worth here, also never lost power (possible because we were on the same power grid as a hospital). My family opened up our home to people who were less fortunate. Scary times man, can’t believe it was 3 years ago
We lost power in Houston for 5 days. There were so many empty buildings in downtown with all the lights on 😒 while everyone else was left without electricity.
0:11 As a Texan myself (I live in Georgetown/Leander area) it does get extremely hot with highs in the 100s in the summer, but people don’t talk about how cold it gets. It gets down to the teens every winter.
The biggest punch in the face is that a LOT of this could have been avoided if Texas learned from what they had experienced roughly 10 years prior to this. The Groundhog's Day Blizzard of 2011 was catastrophic to parts of the Texas Grid, so bad that the state of Texas had to get power from Mexico. The US Army Corps of Engineers told them they needed to winterize their power grid, extreme winter weather happens more often than people think. Texas straight up ignored that until it bit them in the rear end.
Dude. The sheer amount of ignorance that is so common among people has never made sense to me. Like carbon monoxide due to indoor combustion is something I knew about as a CHILD. It's one thing for children to be ignorant because bad parenting, but it's a totally different thing for grown adults to be so ignorant.
@@SpaceRaptorJesusJedi I think a lot of people forget about that sort of thing because of how we get power and heat. It's not really an issue for most people and it quickly turns into an 'out of sight, out of mind' situation. Then you throw in a disaster situation that a lot of those people have never experienced and that's when things start to spiral. It's a damn shame more people don't take care to prepare for these times of situations BEFORE they happen. And many will not take steps afterwards since 'when will it happen again?'. Prepare like it's guaranteed to happen every year.
I was working at a nuclear power plant when this hit, and the nuclear power plants nationwide were able to run at 100% throughout this, due to their design benefits. It was surreal -- because their input to the grid was so critical, absolutely nobody was allowed into the plant for anything except absolutely essential tasks for running the plant. There's normally people going in and out all day and night doing odds and ends, but for about 2 weeks our job was to just sit there, just in case something happened and we were needed.
The most infuriating part of this is that during this whole disaster, the Governor was lying through his teeth about what caused it. That's unforgivable.
This channel really shows we are really peak incompetitance problem, the lack of responsibility feeling companies have throughout the decades. Is jaw dropping
I went through this while undergoing chemotherapy and my family had to constantly bounce me between homes just to keep me warm and safe from infection. It was a terrifying time in my household.
My friend lived through this. He was constantly connecting onto discord calls whenever he could because he was isolated and his area was heavily blacked out. Even to this day he still thanks me for being there to help him stay sane, I can only imagine the fear he must have gone through. We joke about it now, but back then I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the verge of tears.
i remember the house being so quiet and my mom tucking me in with 3 blankets as a 16 year old.. i remember praying my mom was okay driving on the frozen roads to work, and my family lighting candles. texas was really not prepared lol
@@nickthompson2023i came here illegally when i saw 8 years old. Now i have DACA but it breaks my heart when i see veterans homeless or elderly people who live so poor. This is so wrong. The government aint doing right to all of the usa citizens. 😢 i always try to give my last money to them. One time this white chick was so high on drugs but had 2 dogs next to her. I felt so bad i just saw people pass by and didnt do nothing. I went inside to cvs bought some covers for the dogs and her another hispanic guy told me "thank you" i told him "i do what i can" honestly now a days people dont care about each other. We need to change.
My girlfriend was pregnant with our daughter at the time and was expected to give birth on the 24th that month but our girl decided to come early, while the worst of the storm was hitting, and I had to drive my girlfriend to the hospital. The only ones on the road that evening. Only to turn into a night in the hospital because she wasn’t dilated enough. We were discharged the next morning and by that evening it was time. But this time, the weather was worse and snow covered the freeway entirely. Being from a little ways north of Houston I never experienced driving in that kind of snow, ever. So I had to drive us again to her planned delivery hospital further into downtown Houston. After driving as quick and as safe as I could we managed to make it and get her ready for the delivery and 3 hours later we met our daughter for the first time. (She had a massive conehead lol) but as luck would have it, the lights in the hospital went out. Our first night with our newborn we were freezing and hoping she would survive the night. There was no water available in the building the entire 3 days we were there so she couldn’t have the afterbirth washed off until several days later. But all along the way we kept in heavy prayer and I believe it was due of God’s mercy everything worked out the way it did. She is turning 3 1/2 in a few days :) time sure does fly by
@@deelaynee They did but generators can fail -- big building. Plus, they had to turn off lights due to pipes bursting. The water was not drinkable. Had to have bottled water. The staff was low, too.
the pileup mentioned near the beginning happened 5 mins away from where i live, my dad was supposed to have gone to work that morning but was told to stay home bc of ice on the roads, glad he listened and stayed home
I live in canada. Every year first bad snow storm. I stay home. There always crashes on the first day. Your dad did the right thing. People forget how to snow drive the first day.
@@michellestewart9197 one of the main issues is, here in Texas, we don't really get much in the way of snow. Instead, we tend to get freezing rain. It doesn't matter what kind of tires you have, or how much experience you have driving in snowy conditions, when you hit black ice there's really not much you can do. You can't tell the difference between simply rain-wet roads and black ice, and you're just screwed if you have to be on the road.
@@zarasha8220 you can’t prevent black ice but, good defensive driving skills helps stay in control. Like she said, people forget how to drive first day, and like you said, Texas doesn’t get it much. It sucks no matter what but looks to be an unfortunate situation with a bit of lack of knowledge.
@@zarasha8220can tell you I hit really bad black ice my first winter; absolutely wrecked my car. Got a drivers course and taught myself and practiced, hit black ice a few years later and I kept myself in control for the most part. you can’t completely gain control over it but there’s a few things you can do to help not just lose all sense of control.
My cats were so worried bout my siblings and I, they tucked into the blankets and tried to keep us warm. I will always remember that and all the stray animals we helped. My heart still aches for those who didn’t make it
When we had power outs the dogs and cats were allowed in our beds. The fishtank( 20gallons) lost all the fish do to heater going out. But it was fun reading to cookie(dog) under the covers with a flashlight. And mischief (cat) kept my feet warm. ( had another cat on my neck till dad swiped it for sister bed) We grew up with sleeping bags in the closet for power outs in winter.
I remember "Snowmageddon." We boiled water in our kettle for warmth and hydration, shared beds, and even drove around the pitch-black neighborhood with our blankets to warm them up before trying to sleep. I heard of people chopping up furniture for firewood and grilling food inside, leading to monoxide poisoning and fires. The first time we left the neighborhood after the storm, we were running low on food and ate at a local Vietnamese place. Everyone inside shared the same exhausted look one has after a fitful nightmare. The place was one of the only ones open after the freeze, so it'll always be an MVP in my book.
Snowmaggedon ROFLMAO - tell that to me once you spend some time in Fairbanks, Alaska for a winter......when your vehicle freezes up in a block of ice, the outside temps get closer to -20F or more and the snow is not going anywhere since the plows are not able to keep up with the snow itself......and this is a place that is used to having bad winters haha
ooo i got an idea! maybe have 2 cases of water and 1 weeks worth of canned food. so when shit like this goes down you are prepared and dont need to boil water
@arowhead9 I do those things, because I camp off-grid periodically. But many Texans are poor & live paycheck to paycheck. Stocking up is not a luxury they can afford. Nor is thinking your energy company, with a monopoly mandated by state govt, will not honor their OBLIGATION to provide energy ESPECIALLY at the time it's needed THE MOST!! Think... before you use snark to those who've SUFFERED, & some still not fully recovered, from the AVOIDABLE UNNECESSARY literal INCOMPETENCE of our State government. Grow up, or at least grow a heart! 💪
@@CG-Cowgirl reality doesn't care about any of that. you have the supplies to survive or you don't. sorry the world has hazards. survival of the fittest
I was living in Austin, in a Senior Community. What really impressed me, was how everyone helped one another. We really pulled together, sharing food, blankets, phones, etc.
So... The firefighters thought a wellness check was just knocking on the door and leaving if nobody answers the door??? Dafuq... That's just a ding-dong ditch...
Really! If after being told by the family three times they were concerned about carbon monoxide dangers, the fire fighters didn't have the sense among them to think the people could be passed out??? I hope the family sued them for their stupidity.
I hate to be that person, but I hope that fire chief thinks about the way he spoke to that man on the phone for the rest of his life. There's a chance the mother and daughter could have been saved, especially knowing the father had fainted on the phone. Complete incompetency, imo.
the thing is that they can't break into the place. maybe look through the windows would of been better but not if the curtains were fully closed. there isn't much that could of been done if the person doesn't answer or no immediate evidence something is wrong.
@@KhanaHatake Different country, but in the UK during the ol' lockdowns, my next door neighbour had a welfare check. Three police officers arrived, spent half an hour knocking on the doors, the windows, anything they could do to see or hear anything inside and asking the neighbours if we had seen or heard anything recently. After that half an hour they called for a locksmith and camped out front in their cars waiting and watching the building for any sign of movement, while occasionally coming back and knocking on the door. When it came to their lunch break they staggered it so there was one of them always present. Three or four hours later, the lock smith arrives, opens the door and he wasn't home. I actually don't know where he was or what happened as he never came back. But it's scary to go from seeing how the police just hung around until they could confirm one way or another if he was in there and if he was alive or dead, and then you hear stories like in this video where the welfare check gets the no sign of life result, and the authorities just give up and leave.
On day two of this storm in Dallas I just had to get out of the house. I hopped into the car, mainly to get warm lol and went for a drive. It was like driving through a distopian scene in a movie. I was the only car on the road and I there weren't any people in sight. 7-11 was the only thing open and the guy inside was so happy to see me. He said that not a soul has come in all day. I talked with him for a while, bought a couple of things and went back out into the wasteland of Dallas covered in ice and snow. It was a surreal experience.
I lived through this for over a week with no heat and no water. It was so cold in my house that all of the plants that I moved inside froze and died. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me alive was the three pups who laid under the covers with me to keep me and them warm. I lost all of the food in my refrigerator and two freezers. There was no reimbursement for food spoilage or frozen pipes. Our governor who’s in the pockets of ERCOT did nothing and our senator Cabo Cruz fled the state with his family to Cabo. What a POS.
I was 16 when this happened (I'm 20 now) it feels like an ancient memory. I remember it started on Valentines Day, the first time I've ever seen snow with my own eyes. It looked beautiful. Power went out for an hour or two in the morning, which prevented me from doing classes online due to covid still being high. It came back on, and class resumed as usual. It was a normal day besides the snow. Woke up next morning, and before I could log on, all the remaining active electronics shut down, and I was super excited not to log on to school today. It was still snowing, more than yesterday. I wanted the power to come back on after school hours passed, but it never did. We didn't have power for 3 days. Our food turned rotten, and we had to throw it all away. We boiled water to keep us warm along with our gas-powered stove. The nights were the worst. Me and my older brother would stay up late doing whatever we can to pass the time. Neither of us could sleep in the cold or warm up in our beds at night. I still remember when both of my brothers and I were in our dining room at night wanting this to end and after chatting for almost an hour. We hear a fan go off in one of our rooms before the light turned on and we all hurdled with joy like idiots glad to see it all end. Our fear was that it doesn't go off again. It didn't, but it was still cold outside, but the snow was melting already.
I remember this happening. I was in my kitchen when I heard on the news that there was a risk of a blackout. Power went out that same night. We went over 62 hours without power. I'll never forget sitting outside in my car eating olives and cold black eyed peas.
I’ve went a week without power in WA couple years back only places That don’t experience it that often are states that actually deal with bad winter storms n what bit
@@FirstLast-hs4gw Jesus christ dude your lack of self awareness is showing off big time. All I’m hearing is you’ve used basic information and practical knowledge as a way to inflate your ego so you can justify looking down on people and make light of a serious situation that they had to deal with while also blatantly disregarding their state’s lack of infrastructure and general readiness for such a wild event. This might come as a surprise to you but no one else is you so they won’t ‘disregard useless emotions’. You sound like an edgy child. Rarely will people even begin to consider your opinions when you sound like a stuck up know-it-all, again, something teenagers and children do not understand.
I was cooking food by the barrel outside in the backyard for a couple days/nights and drinking the heck out of my dads booze 😂 my lips had never been so dry and cracked
Cold black eyed peas with olives as a side or garnish now that's Texas surviving and initiative. Bet those peas were the best tasting blackeyed peas you ever eaten. Glad you persevered. IT was really something wasn't it?
I remember this horrible week. We fully recovered within in a month. However, the whole no power, 5 blankets wasn’t enough to keep warm was horrible. Even though we lived in a small apartment, for us it wasn’t enough to keep fully warm. Dogs almost passed but made it through. My father almost got hypothermia but we acted quickly so he was fine. We could see our breath inside our home, the ice was making its way through our window and door. It was horrible. At some point we had to chip off the ice with a hammer to go out and charge our electronics through our cars. I will never forgive people in charge who kept lying telling people that the power issue would be solved or be back by midnight. I lived at the time, in a neighborhood considered “low class” and our power was gone for the entirety of the storm. My friend who was a house sitter at the time, was house sitting in the nicer neighborhood and she explained that the power went out for 30 mins and that it never went out again after that. The whole situation was horrible. My heart will always be with the families who lost loved ones during this storm.
In almost any disaster, service providers will act much quicker and give more priority to higher income areas. It's horrifying whey you realize your life can be in danger because of class inequality.
It truly did suck. My family and I live in a middle class neighborhood, but we were still out of power for about a week. We live near an upper class neighborhood and I remember seeing that all the houses there were dark when we went drove to get food. I think it's basically just luck of the draw for if you happen to be connected to a good power grid. I just don't want you to feel bad that you were excluded for that reason.
As someone who has always lived in the northern part of USA, where winter can see tons of snow, and super cold weather. I forget just how much an entire city can turn an every day situation we deal with everyday in the north, and is a no biggie occurrence, into a catastrophic nightmare and a literal life threatening situation for its residents for another area of the USA that isn't used to it. It's just crazy.
Let's see how well your state fares when the entire state, being the second biggest state in the nation and who knows how many times bigger than your state, is frozen over and you have no electricity, because the extra reserves of gas froze too. It was bad and an epic scale, not because the people were stupid. When it's as overwhelmingly bad, there's only so much you can do. Oh, and Texas gets snow. We're used to it. Just not the entire state, even down to the coast. Educate yourself. But when you've got a state as big as Texas freezing over in its entirety, it doesn't matter how used to it you are, it's going to stretch the resources to the limits.
@@aewtx we'd fair just fine... The entire country of Canada does just fine too, every year, and that's 30x bigger than texas lol. Your argument makes no sense.. And you took offense to something really stupid as well..
@@Cramblit You basically called us all stupid. Yeah, let me call you stupid and see how offended you get. Look at you, you're up in arms already too. :rolls eyes: And that is Canada. Not quite the same. You're not even at the same level as Canada.
@@CramblitYour original comment was really dumb. Just so you know, you haven’t felt cold - where you live isn’t “cold” - there is always a place that’s much colder. Also you live in your colder northern area with thinks like heaters, etc - the problem wasn’t just the temperature number, it was how it shut down electricity throughout the area. Get help
2:02 i hada friend who lost 3 family members in this accident. She was traumatized and spent 5 months in a psych ward and never fully recovered. We graduated last year, hope her and her family are ok
As someone living in northeast USA, I remember hearing about this when it happened, and there's still a lot in this video I HAVEN'T heard. Hearing about the way people were treated is heartbreaking, especially that man trying to check on his family and first respondents doing essentially nothing for HOURS. Price hiking during this event was awful too. The cold is no joke. Even if you think you'll never see snow, it's NEVER a bad idea to learn about cold and snowstorm preparedness.
Part of the problem with having every service be private and little/no safety nets is that when a disaster occurs, the company still puts profits first. Having a high demand for heat and being the sole supplier to 90% of the State gave them a unique monopoly, and they used it to their advantage. And being immune to lawsuits meant there was nothing to put pressure on them to not do what they did. And I bet moving forward there still won't be any measures put in place to limit or restrict the amount they can charge or change their prices in a short period of time, so if it should happen again they will price hike again, no doubt about it.
During this total frozen outage, me and my father would heat up in the car, watch movies and eat snacks, and honestly it’s one of my favorite moments I spent with him in an outage.
I was just writing about my positive experience. Yeah, it was cold. But man I loved being by our fire with my kids and wife. And we played games. I got to introduce my kids to the ancient art of POGS.
from the dfw (arlington) and when our power went out my mom courageously drove us all the way to lancaster where my aunt had power and gas because she lived nearby a hospital. what was typically a 25-30 minute drive took 2 hours!!! a bunch of my family members piled into her house and we just spent the week at her house. my birthday was the 12th but i can't even remember what happened that day... and i'll never forget how i had to leave my fish, paris, who either froze or starved to death. rip to her:( for me, that week was filled with overall joy and happiness (that we had no school), but i was only 12 and much too young to understand the severity of the situation. however, the now 15 year old me, has realized just how privileged i was to be garnered with such a joyous experience during such a time of difficulty. it really shows how maturity can change the way you see an event. my heart goes out to all the victims of the storm and i hope their families have, and or, can someday find peace
I live in Houston. The power was out in my area for about five days. It was 13 degrees. I've never been more glad that I collect comfy blankets. I'm disabled so I work from home around 70% bedbound and have to take medication to not sleep for days at a time. When I heard how cold it was going to get, I piled all of my blankets on me and while the power was still on I filled a gallon jug with hot tap water and put it under the blankets with me along with a bunch of non-perishable food. It was so warm and cozy that I had to lift the blankets to let some cold air in occasionally. Just like camping with lots of sleeping. I wondered if most people just didn't own a lot of blankets. Weirdest thing I learned was that some computer mice break easily in the cold. I had to buy a new one because somehow it permanently broke my mouse wheel. At least the food in the fridge was okay after all that time!
@@jasperzatch610 I felt really fortunate that I didn't have much preparing to do for it, because I'm one of those 'be prepared for anything' types and just don't have the money to do so most of the time. I had some kind of mean humor around Covid time because my friends always tell me how nice it must be to be able to do for the most part whatever I want at home all the time, and I've told them yeah it seems nice until you realize how very not-quaint it is not being able to go anywhere when you want to. They've always told me yeah yeah no problem, I'd deal with it for the freedom. Covid rolls around and suddenly they're wailing ermegerd being stuck in your house all day is sooo lame! How can anyone staaand it? Yeah, I thought so... It's weird to hurt being envied for things you don't want for yourself. In any case, I hope you don't have to ever worry about dealing with such disasters!
Same, my family has those heavy mexican blankets so we tried to use them as double insulation on the walls, charged powerbanks when power came back for like 30mins, and ran off ramen boiled off a small pot from a generator and hot plate. It sucked so the best thing we did was 500pc puzzles and to pass hunger just sleep through it but definitely had it better than others who were truly struggling, now I buy all sorts of tools to be prepared.
I'm from SA,TX. I remember being at home with my family, and we were so excited for the snow to come. It never shows here. On day one, we were having so much fun, missing school and work and having fun in the snow. Around day 3, we had enough. We didn't have electricity or running water for like 2 days.
@@jacksonkoeppel2533 Man ur lucky we literally froze for four days straight and didn’t even get snow, it hasn’t snowed since 2004 apparently but i wasn’t born for another half decade after that soo
Our town had a few deaths because of this. One guy brought his grill inside to warm part of the house at night and the whole family suffocated. Another family had their home burn down due to using grilling coals in his fireplace that wasn't rated for it. Then a hotel in town (killeen) burned down and the pipes were frozen so they had to let it burn. At one point Lowes started to sell all their lumbar for people to burn, they had a line out the door. It was pandemonium, our house went over a week with no running water as the main pipe feeding the subdivision had burst.
I lived in Austin TX when this happened. My apartment didn’t have a fireplace so I survived by using my backpacking gear and my snow skiing clothes. Thank the good Lord, I had a couple of goose down sleeping bags, and backpacking fuel/stove and backpacking food. Feel bad for my neighbors who didn’t have winter gear like I had. I feel for those who died during the winter storm of 2021.
It was 28 degrees continuously indoors during that time but I remember going out during the day into the empty streets of Lamar and Congress. Absolutely surreal. Then walking along the river park and coming across a body under a small makeshift tarp. Haunting to say the least. The homeless population definitely had it hard during those times.
@@Sun33daze yes the homeless had the worst of it during those days of below freezing. They have the worst of it when the temperatures are consistently above 100 everyday. They never can catch a break.
I live in Atlanta, GA and was visiting my boyfriend in Texas when this happened. We didn't have heat or power for four days and my flights kept getting canceled. Luckily, his roommate has a backup battery that used solar power to recharge so we could have our phones charged and a small heating plate to warm up canned soup. We wore lots of layers of clothes and drank alcohol just to stay warm. They didn't have a fireplace or portable heaters. It was quite the experience but we were a bit better prepared than most people. They had plenty of canned food, blankets, and clothes to bundle up. My heart goes out to the people that lost loved ones.
Just an FYI....alcohol only provides the illusion of warming up. It actually drops your core temperature and that's why you think you are warmer, because it is about the difference in temp that affects our perception.
I lived in Southeast Texas when this happened, And boy was it crazy. We literally were stuck at houses for days. Most of the roads were frozen, nobody could get out, and we were completely running out of food supplies. And what’s worse, my backyard roof collapsed. So much ice and snow was building up on it, until the point where it couldn’t hold on, and then it just collapsed. I tell you from experience, it was the worst thing that ever happened to us.
Born and raised in Dallas. I remember in the early 2000's growing up we had freezing temperatures, but this, this right here was unheard of! I worked 12 hr shift after pipes started thawing as residential properties were being flooded (plumbing work) residents went weeks without water as we worked to get water up and running. I prepared for this storm and friends and family were telling me I'm exaggerating. I had weeks worth of fuel for my generator, food, and propane cookware.
As someone from europe: This was absolute nuts. Seeing this whole scenery fold out LIVE on the other side of the world, realizing that these people basically have no way to help themselves, has changed me in some way im not able to explain. I cannot remember if it was Texas or another state, but there was a story of a couple of tourists only surviving because a family let them in.
I’m from TX and lived through this. What was nuts was I went out and drove around to warm up in my car and no one was out. It’s like every living soul disappeared. I luckily had a fireplace in my home and I chopped wood and slept with my dogs to stay warm and not freeze to death. I was without power for over a week in -10C. I grilled outdoors, made cowboy coffee, and melted snow for water. Crazy times but I survived.
I know how you feel; I felt the same way when we heard about the thousands of people that died last year because of that heatwave and the wildfires it caused. We work in 110° F (44°-46° C) temperatures even still at 3:00 AM at night at the production facility I work at here in San Antonio; it rocked the shit out of me that so many people were dying from something we're used to.
Middle class here not rich. Living in Dallas Texas, and we were fortunate to get through the disaster with no issue at all. My family always stock up groceries every week, we always let the water run during freezing temperatures, and I didn’t knew how bad it was when seeing this video, because I still went to work everyday (yes I drove on the ice, but very slowly). Most coworker said they had no power at their home, so again. We were fortunate compare to many who suffered.
My personal experience with this freeze: a roommate just moved in and got settled, they were a coworker of fiancee and I, other roommate's dog gave birth to puppies. First day of the freeze we try going to work, keyword try. 2nd day water no longer works. For the rest of the week we are trapped in this house unable to work with the only silver lining being we still have power. I scooped up ice from outside and boiled it just to have water. Me and the new roomie get closer as friends and i adopted one of the puppies. The puppy is now three years old. It was one hell of a greuling week but our job paid us in compensation.
As someone who loves your channel and had to evacuate from Houston during this event, it’s absolutely wild to see it on your channel!! Fortunately, I grew up in Alaska and I had recently moved from Wisconsin, so as soon as all of the weather alerts started going out, I rolled up a bunch of towels, and lined the doors and windows as best I could to insulate. I got my dog and the four month old kittens I had recently rescued and piled them all in my room on my bed with all my blankets when the power went out. It got cold pretty quickly - it was mid-50s Fahrenheit in my apartment when I left, and I don’t know how low it got before power came back. My dog and I would’ve been rather cold and uncomfortable but fine, but the kittens were young and rescues and they started getting too cold for comfort. Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to replacing my hardcore winter tires with something more appropriate for Texas yet, so I loaded up the animals in my car and drove (carefully!) to my mom’s place in San Antonio. Edit: to clarify, most of the roads were frozen and black ice was everywhere. The only reason I felt comfortable evacuating was because I grew up driving in ice and snow and I still had my Wisconsin winter tires. It was still nerve-wracking - obviously, there wasn’t salt or sand, or anything on the roads like you usually get up north, and I had to stop and help several people who had spun out. As one happy note in this whole mess, though - two of my rescue kittens were born to a stray mom that we hadn’t yet managed to catch and fix. She was pregnant again, and a good Samaritan found her and brought her inside when temps got bad. Mama cat gave birth during the freeze, I adopted her trio of kittens (half-siblings to two of my rescues), and we finally got momma cat fixed once the trio were weaned.
Ok, how can bots go ballistic in comments, but I post ONE pic of my cats and all my comments are nuked lol. Was trying to send you a pic of the cats now, Kate, (bc they’re cute as heck) but I guess not lol.
@@kateg7298 anyway, even if sending you a pic of the cats didn’t work, I wish you all the best and I hope you have good fortune throughout your life. And if you ever meet anyone in Colorado looking to adopt a cat, send them my way bc I’ve moved up here and I foster now lol.
I woke up one morning during this storm with water pouring into my master closet through the overhead light fixture Fortunately, I did not lose much in my apartment. But other apartments in my complex were totally destroyed and had to be gutted. It took a year for all the repairs. I was 81 at the time and I really don’t know what I would have done if I had not had family nearby. I called my son and he told me to pack a bag; he was on the way. I spent the next ten days with him and his wife. Although we had rolling blackouts, they had plenty of food that did not have to be cooked or could be heated quickly. And they had a gas fireplace that we were able to use. They were both able to work from home so they were able to spend a lot of time at home. I was so lucky to have them.
I spent 2 days preparing before the storm came. I cleaned the carb on my generator and made sure it was in working order, got 20 gallons of gasoline for it, picked up 3 propane tanks and a propane heater, winterized my house as well as I could manage, stocked up on groceries, filled up a 40gal plastic trash can with water, etc. We never lost power at my house thankfully, I had one pipe freeze and burst under the house but managed to catch it pretty early and cap it off. It was actually a fun time for me just staying home and playing in the snow for a week. It's tragic how many lives were lost and the suffering that a lot of people went through but I'll always have good memories of this storm personally.
I was lucky enough to never have lost power, have a pipe burst. I had to drive but never went over 20 mph and stayed very clear from anyone on the road. I saw trucks slipping and sliding going 50 not giving a fuck about other drivers, just wanting to do some snow drifting. Crazy how everyone experiences disasters in such different perspectives.
this is a lot like my experience -- my sister and i had so much fun out with our dogs in the snow, but i know not everyone felt the same way. i'm lucky that we saw this as more of a fun time than a terrifying one
I remember this time very vividly. I was a GM at a local restaurant and I remember looking at the weather forecast on a daily basis. I was shocked to see how cold it was supposed to get. I have lived here almost 40 years and we have never seen temperatures get to single digits, much less 0 with wind chill going below 0 degrees. It was a Valentine's Day I will never forget. The store shut down early thank the Lord, all though higher ups wanted us to stay open as late as possible as usual. The next few days were heart wrenching. The power was out at home, My sibling and I were contemplating on staying home or driving to our parents house close by. We were shocked and scared. We aren't used to dealing with deathly cold temperatures. We had to sleep in our cars because the generators were frozen and wouldn't start. Now granted we knew about carbon monoxide poisoning and our cars were parked outside in the country, not in a garage, but for people with small children, who are scared for their lives might not think clearly when the choices are: freezing to death, drive around treacherous roads risking your life, or keep the car on for heat at your home. Most people don't think to prepare for a catastrophe. It's all in the moment. No one expected to be without power for 4-7 days. Hell, I had to go back to work 3 days later. The 2nd day one of my family members had a mental breakdown and said they'd rather freeze to death in their house stunned me. Thankfully no one passed away in our family, but what a lot of northerners need to know, is we do not have adequate resources here for winter weather. We don't have snow plows, and the de-icing trucks we have to get from elsewhere. The worst is like this fine UA-cam video illustrates the state officials, energy companies, and even emergency response did not listen to the OBVIOUS WARNINGS. The Weather Channel was sending warnings, actual warnings a week in advance, and nothing was done. I'm not sure if they could have stopped the power outages, but they could have saved more lives instead of leaving us out to dry. Anyway ranting over hope everyone stays safe and Happy Independence Day!
If you voted republican then you voted for the conditions you live in . 🤷 That's what y'all tell us about the crime in our blue cities. Maybe prepare yourself better.
I lived in a tiny town called Gunter TX at the time. (Pronounced Gun-ner by the townspeople) And this hit. Our hous had a separate heating system from the town and during the whole event, we had multiple pairs of elderly couples in our house who's homes had frozen. I wont brag about who my family saved, but be happy we did what we did. A fun (but expensive) fact about the event was that soda cans left inside of automobiles froze and exploded, totaling a lot of cars and other vehicles.
What people don’t see is all of our livestock that died. Our roads couldn’t handle the cold and broke up and apart all over my area outside of Austin. I wrecked my truck but I had 30 horses without water and nothing would’ve stopped me from bringing it to them. We got lucky, others were not.
I also live on a farm in Canada, and we regularly get power outages during the winter, (once, 6 in 5 weeks and one was 4 days long), -20 weather, and up to 2 feet of snow. When we have no power, we have no water from the well. I have to bucket water on a rope out of the well and trudge 320 feet to the barns to get the animals water. For heat we have a wood stove, so are okay for heat and cooking, and dollar store battery lights, but it is truly a pain to have no power and no water. I felt so bad for the Texas people and couldn't imagine having herds of cattle and livestock to feed and water.
One my cousins died from this, so his family member had to live through this with his dead body in the house. I was lucky that I had a bunch of warm clothes and stuff but my heart broke when I heard the news. I hope any families or friends who lost someone close are doing well right now.
I survived this disaster with my family, We burned newspapers, old books, and any safe material we could find to keep warm, we lost power, for over 2 days, luckily we were able to find warmth and shelter. I was with my parents and my sister, we had plenty of food from our garden and from previous groceries. I thank God everyday for keeping us all alive in the worst of times Edit: thanks for the likes, I appreciate it But, I have more information to add to my story, I remember looking at the outside temperature my phone and it read -2° F which is almost unheard of for Texas, some broadcasts that still worked reported temperatures as low as -28° F so, we were very fortunate
Close to 10 for me if I remember right... negative outside in a sub of ftw. With a shit power structure that my boyfriend 2 streets away got power in 3 days. Welp I moved north east of ftw ... I'm expecting more hell
I hate to say it but our state government's denial of serious climate issues was a factor in this. Our summers are going to be getting hotter and our winters are going to be getting colder because of the impact our pollution has on our climate, and even if the current state government for some reason doesn't "believe" in it the least they can do is prepare us for disasters that might be due to repeat themselves sooner than you think.
I was very lucky to be living on-campus at Texas A&M, which has its own power grid and generation (being a military school helps). I stayed in my dorm room and played video games for a week. I barely saw my roommate day or night, he was out playing in the snow with friends, a truck, and (presumably) several cases of beer. The on-campus workers that kept us fed and safe have all my respect, all of them really stepped up.
Military kids get lot of favors in terms of higher life standards right from the begining. No wonder they get attracted to better and best life standards else where too. They deserve to get all that. Happy for you. 🎉🎉
I was in the thick of it, it started on a Sunday & stayed like that for a week & it was brutal! -3 to 0 for several days straight. My parents 68 years old say they have never seen such weather here 20* and we are dying here and only at night usually. The roads turned to ice skating rings. My son I started offering free rides, gas & propane service for people. Later we started just doing medical, elderly & essential needs first. It was rewarding to help many elderly people get to loved ones & see the relief in their face. We helped who we could along the way pulling ambulances, power utility trucks up hills & stuck people trying to get basic supplies. We slept only for 4-5 hours a day, ate what we could at gas stations and kept at it my son ran the navigation and decided who was priority (he hardly turned down anyone). We ended up getting a phone call about a hospital not having enough food because delivery trucks couldn’t make the drive, so we took our clean stock trailer & ventured to make the normal 1-1/2hr trip that ended up being about 5hrs one way. Then ended making another run to another one the next day. Many others that were brave enough to drive also helped & it was nice to see our fellow Texans jump into action without being asked to! People prep now when the forecast calls for cold weather.
As a Minnesotan I remember watching the news and being absolutely baffled. I couldn’t understand how people were dying in a storm that we have dozens of times a year up here. That was the type of weather where kids here would still go to school through. It was just so puzzling until I realized that none of the people who built the infrastructure there even thought about the possibility of things going even slightly wrong.
I've experienced a similar sort of thing here. The news will be trying to brew some panic over England getting a few days of below freezing temperatures, and I'll joke to my Scottish friends that it looks like I'm in for a cold week and they'll laugh back with, "ken we've had for a month? Stop being a big baby!" But then their friends from up in Norway laughs at the Scottish for being disgruntled at having to deal with snow and ice every winter, when it's just everyday life for them! It's not just the infrastructure either, I've only met their Norwegian friends once, at their wedding, but they had quite the laugh at seeing some of us struggle to drive on the slippy roads due to the complete lack of experience dealing with the weather that bad to them.. mostly the English lot that chose to drive there. The way he tells it, in Norway you either become a Rally driver, or you due to a tree on the side of the road. So for people living in what's basically blasting heat 99% of the time, that complete lack of experience dealing with that cold snap regularly enough, it led to far too many fatal errors.
Minnesota here also, I agree, then last year California got hit hard, now we are experiencing flooding and im impress that 100 year old dam still holds up, I don't wanna think what winter holds for us this year
I was a delivery driver in this time period. I still remember the Thursday I had to drive out into some very curvy roads to make it to Hunt, TX. It went from a normal cold day, to water droplets icing the moment it settled. It was approx 35min from the office, and by the time I arrived at my destination everything was covered in a white filter. It was scary enough passing by this one icy bridge, but to have to pass by it 3 more times was something I'm lowkey traumatized AND amazed with myself with how I handled it. Luckily my co worker and I were always on the same page, so we tried lightening the mood by telling funny stories. With how top heavy the truck was I'm sure he was also scared that it could've gone bad any moment. The funny part is that because I did an excellent job still doing my work, I was sure I would've gotten a raise after that, but no. Boss man said that if I wanted a .25 cent raise I had to socialize more with the other employees. That was the moment I realized that you should really put yourself above work sometimes
Dude it was brutal. I was in 5th grade when it happened and I’m in high school now. Me and my little sister were freezing. We couldn’t sleep in our beds cause our rooms were to cold. We had to sleep in sleeping bags in the living room. We had to fill a agh tub with water before the freeze cause we never knew if the faucet would work. My mom distracted us from fear with the board game trouble. And without a shower in days I felt disgusting. I honestly thought I’d die from hypothermia. Nearby organizations passed out hot spaghetti to warm our bodies which worked. I was relieved when the freeze was finally over. I just hope that I’ll never have to go through that again
7 days no electricity. My 80 year old mom did not do well. She started having seizures she was so cold and upset. I had prepped as much as possible and had dripping water and was able to cook on my propane stove top. Charged my phone in the car. (We couldn’t leave because we were iced in. The car was in my carport and I was able to carefully get to it. I threw cat litter out on the ice.)Firemen were finally able to get to my door (on foot breaking the snow and ice)on the 5th day with wool army blankets, bottled water and snacks. Those blankets were amazing! My house was 4 miles from our tiny town. I moved us to way upstate New York and it’s awesome up here. It may get unbelievably cold, but they’re prepared for it. The electric company actually lets you know ahead of time about storms and messages to keep you updated. That would NEVER happen in Texas under idiot Abbott. They also have utility discounts and programs for the elderly and disabled up here. Abbott canceled the discount program in Texas years ago. 😡
I got hit pretty hard by this storm too. To our benefit, we were friends with a neighbor who had a fire place, so we went over there during the days to shelter around the fire as much as possible. We essentially lost all water and power, we would get 10 seconds of power every 2 hours. Couldn’t even microwave soup. So we lived off grill heated (grill was outside) soup and pancakes. Eventually they ran out of logs, and we were stuck back on our own. However, we learned that one of my schoolmates family house still had full power and water. We suspect because they were in the same grid as a fire station. They hosted us and a couple other families for a couple days, letting us have a warm place to be, hot food, and hot shower. My dad and I kept going back to our house periodically between all this to keep pipes from bursting and see if it was livable. I think the lowest the house got to was about 39 degrees. I remember waking up feeling like my bed was frozen. Luckily, after it all, we just had a few frozen pipes and boiled water for a few days. I also just so happened to have a heavy duty winter jacket because I was about to go to New York, so I was well prepared at least. It became a “grit and bear it” situation, but we got through relatively well comparatively. I would also like to shoutout that an owner to a massive furniture store was able to keep the building powered with back up generators and opened the building and all the furniture to whoever needed it during the storm. I know it was a great place of respite for a large sum of people.
I was camping outdoors during the freeze. However, I was uniquely prepared for such events as deep winter camping at such below temperature is a hobby of mine, and I had the correct gear giving me that ability. At the peak of it, my logs read it hitting -9°F. The kid from Honduras who died was from my area and lived only minutes away. I still feel so bad for him and the others who lost their life and wish I would have been able to help everyone. I was the only person with running water as well on my road due to my preparations after everyones pipes burst, so we gave some of it out. I also did what I could to help others as much as I could to stop flooding once water pressure came back causing their pipes to burst(I used a t-bar to shut my water off once pressure dropped to prevent mine from bursting when pressure was reintroduced to my possibly frozen pipes). Ercot and Abbots' deregulations to the grid are heavily to blame for a lot of the suffering. I will never forgive them or the rest of Texas leadership. They still haven't prepared for future events as power has gone down due to heat as well. The grid repair cost was also put on consumers as well after Abbot said it wouldn't be. Wouldn't be surprised if he took a legal lobyist bribe after making that statement. My power bill before the ice storm was usually 170$ month. Power every month since then has been 380$ and looks to be going up again.. Rip to all those who suffered and mercy to those they left behind
It’s crazy because living in Maryland a year prior I watched on the news thinking “ what’s the big deal it’s just a little snow and cold” But moving down to Texas and now seeing how unprepared the electric grid is here , how frequent power outages happen from minor weather , and the roads coupled with how “insanely fast” people drive down here , I can see how this became a disaster
The weather during this storm was NOT unprecedented. They have gotten prolonged below freezing temperatures in the past. So much of the disaster is due to horrifically inadequate weatherization of power generation, water mains, and building plumbing. Not to mention the completely isolated texas grid with the inability to import power. If this cold freeze happened anywhere else in the US, the worst that would have happened is roads being shut down.
Let’s not forget that the state of Texas is run by and represented by a bunch of a-holes who are more concerned with calling anyone who raises the alarm about climate change and the need for paying attention to potential disasters like this “libtards” and “snowflakes” than actually governing for the safety and betterment of the people. Let’s lay this right where it belongs: at the wheels of Gov. Abbott and all the elected and appointed officials who are more concerned with making sure women can’t get proper medical care than paying attention to the infrastructure necessary to withstand weather events like this. Wouldn’t want to have had regulations that didn’t allow for charging customers $10,000 for one month’s power bill (yes, those happened) get in the way of record profits for energy company shareholders.
We had a similar storm in the 90s. Also, Texas has interstate power connections with all surrounding states that can be connected in emergencies, it was even mentioned in the video. Those connections were active during the event to purchase and import power from the western grid.
I live in NW Iowa and we were seeing -25F with -55 windchill during this time. Thankfully we didn't lose power (all it takes is that one tree branch) and my furnace survived running 24/7. After this storm I bought a generator just in case.
That is incorrect. You can search “feb 2021 power outage” + any state around Texas and see that most of the states in the middle of the USA lost power during those couple days. The media was very happy to target Texas though, so you only heard about Texas.
😂😂 well I never thought I'd see this. Born and raised, man water pipe broke didn't have water for 2months. When the power was out I walked to my job(power was on to charge my phone) fell and ate it. BUT got to my restaurant job to charge our stuff (we definitely weren't gonna open) Then people started knocking in the glass asking if we had food. We looked around the kitchen everything was fine....we smiled at each other opened the kitchen and just started giving out free food! It was crazy everyone was caught off guard. People asking to buy everything we said no it has to be able to go around. They gave us cases of beer 😂 and cash it was free. It was a unique moment for us helping our community.
@@Lil-Britches Dang, dude! Must have looked ready for a Mr. Muscles competition after that! Wow... I would not have fared well, since I was sick during those times 😱
It’s insane that I live in Texas, remember this storm, and still didn’t know it was this bad. I’m so lucky to have gotten the mild end of this situation
I think most of us Texans have a degree of PTSD cause of this. Toilet paper, bread, and water frequently go out of stock due to any little thing now. As for myself, I decided to visit a friend in Galveston that weekend and decided I can beat the storm if I left early enough back to Austin. A 3 hour trip took 2 day, and I nearly got stuck (almost died, I'm sure) on the road. I had never been so scared in my life, I was 26 at the time and traveling alone.
@@whitneylosh-johnson2420 my company decided to get a back up generator so if there is a power failure or ice storm again, we'll still be able to come in and work. 😂
I was 14 and lived in Dallas when this happened. I was surprised at the number of people who had died/freezed in their homes. My brother and I slept in our parents' room to share body heat, but the bed was too cramped, so i slept on the ground under 4 covers. we also had an indoor kerosene heater that we had kept on for a couple hours at night before going to sleep (we kept most of the windows open when it was on). The indoor and outdoor pipes were also dripping at all times. Our 5 budgies and 3 dogs we had at the time were also kept as warm as possible and didn't freeze. We even had 2 portable camping stoves that we used. My dad had lent one to our old neighbors and would check on them once a day. Me and my brother also went to play in the snow till we literally started seeing red, lol
im glad the budgies survived, I have a cockatiel and he barely stays warm in 70 degrees so I would be terrified if it ever got that cold, but at least were prepared in the midwest. I can't believe how scary it must've been sleeping with that cold. Glad it was ok in the end.
@@bricksandtech7958 I was 12 around the time (16 now) but holy that was a crazy time I had to wrap my lizard in 2 blankets just to keep him warm, we also had a fireplace that ran on gas instead of electricity so thank goodness, we got power back I think the same day it went off, sadly some people in the area didn't get it back for over a week.
Barely a mention of how Texas is cut off from the rest of the countries grid. Meaning power cannot be rerouted from another state into Texas. There are 3 major power sectors in the US. Eastern, Western and Texas. Then they jack up prices when things like this happen. Case study of what deregulation can lead to. And lead to "Cancun Cruz."
Without going back through the whole video to check, I feel like the grid being mostly self contained got mentioned three times. Maybe there should have been more focus on it as a dedicated point, but it wasn't quite barely mentioned.
The wholesale price for electricity fluctuates wildly, but most consumers are on fixed price plans. The people affected by the price spike were on plans that directly exposed them to the market rate. They were perfectly happy paying $0.03-0.05/kwh under normal conditions but when it spiked to $3-4/kwh they ended up with massive bills. The problem wasn't the spike in price, it was that consumers weren't properly informed of the risk and didn't set aside money in case of a massive surge. This was a relatively small percentage of people, but the news blew it out of purportion. As far as the surge pricing goes, it was the consumer's decision to go with the plan they did, not the price being "jacked up. Prices fluctuate normally on all grids. I'd recommend doing research before making assumptions. Texas lawmakers do plenty of things you should be pissed about, this isn't one of them.
I'm sure that POS Cruz was nice and warm...along with Abbott.. As long as the money rolls in they could care less about the people of Texas.. Well at least the ones barely making it or poor people
@@justinr9753 Cute cope, but there's hundreds of things that coward could have doing as the state's Senator. Organizing fundraising, tapping your billionaire benefactors' cash stacks, requesting federal aide, preparing contract packages for emergency repairs, etc. But nah, vacation with his wife who he lets people call ugly.
We had no power or water for 7 days. Thank God we have a fire place!! We had to break off branches from trees in our apartment parking lot for firewood. We used our bedroom closet as a "fridge" for our food and cooked outside on a little grill. We kept frozen stuff on the patio. Fortunately we had just gone grocery shopping a few days before and were stocked up on food and bottled water. At night we put the fire out but kept some embers burning, and we had to huddle together in the living room in our sleeping bags to stay warm. Covering the windows with blankets helped too. It was still only 40-45 degrees in there, even with the fireplace! It was scary! Luckily I grew up in the Midwest and knew what to do. A lot of people weren't so fortunate though. These apartments are so drafty and aren't built for that kind of freeze. So many people weren't prepared and had never even experienced that type of weather.
I had moved to texas temporarily to help take care of my elderly father in 2020. I stupidly chose to live in a family owned RV as I didn't want to rent, being I didn't know how long i was going to be there. I went through that winter of 2021 and then the late summer storm that hit in 2023 with 90 mph winds while living in that RV. The late summer storm hit two weeks before my planned departure. Let's just say I am glad to be back in my home state. No state has perfect weather, I know this, but I am okay with the weather where I have lived all my life. It pissed me off to find the Ercot meeting had spoken of previous concerns of the upcoming 2021 winter storm, all of maybe 3 to 4 minutes. It also pissed me off to see ppl in other states on social media scoffing at Texas for whining about the "cold weather". My heart bleeds for the lost lives in 2021. 🙏
This horrendous event seriously gave me PTSD... as a single mom with 2 little ones, living in SA with no family, it was the worst!! 😳 We had no water or electricity for DAYS!! I prayed every night that we wouldn't die alone frozen in our apartment. We all had to wear layers of sweaters and clothes with mittens and beanies to bed because the nights were unbearable. All the food in our fridge spoiled and the one in the pantry was gone...I couldn't get to my car to at least warm up because it was stuck in a garage and the garage was electrical... i tried manually opening it but was unsuccessful 😭 no one was around to help... my phone died because I couldn't charge it... my family was in another city 500 miles away and couldn't get to us to help because roads were closed due to icy roads.... it was the absolute worst event of our lives 😳😭 A few months later in July, I said peace out San Antonio, and left that city quick!!! I have never looked back or even visited it since then. Now whenever we have a storm in my hometown, I tend to freak out and start praying that we don't lose power....😭
@@JM-fo1te Not all apartments have porches. We were on the third story with no way to store food outside because of this and the blackout lasted much, much longer than the food-safe outdoor temperatures did.
The poor 12 year old Conroe boy that died from the freeze went to my little sister’s school. Our house was 37 degrees when the power finally came back on. Other than hurricanes, this is probably the worst natural disaster that we’ve even been through. Glad to see that it’s been covered
37 degrees?!?! Jesus, your house was warm at least. 😂 How ERCOT got protection from being sued for their failures, when they are a private company, is staggering.
@@MoniPolyyea it’s crazy because that freeway where everyone died and crashed, I passed on the rite side of that freeway . And my car was literally moving on its own . Good thing i didn’t get on that lane where that crash happened
@@MoniPoly Oh. Ok, that is pretty cold then. I was just picturing a room with like 3 propane heaters set up and roaring away. 😂 Glad you at least survived it.
My family and i had just moved here from California, we were caught by surprise as we were told that this never happens here… right !! Luckily the worse thing that happened was one frozen water line in our kitchen, we also had rolling blackouts… i pulled my fridge and placed a space heater on the wall from where the water line comes in and as soon as we had electricity i ran the heater! We only had 15 minutes but it was enough to heat the line and defrost the water line. No water pipes broke thanks to God, other than that and dealing with the rolling blackouts we made it ok., we had just purchased our home and it is a newer home so we got very lucky, it was a very challenging time for all of us but now, we are better prepared i feel, having been in our home almost 4 years i feel more confident and , i also know my home much better and how to deal with a lot of issues. It is very sad to hear about those who lost family.. my prayers for the family.
I remember this like it was yesterday. This entire week was crazy, people getting into accidents, people dying, the pile of cars on freeway. Then ERCOT going all monday night raw on us Texans when we got the electric bill. We were fortunate enough to have a well insulated home and blankets for days. We had 3 dogs at the time and they loved the snow and 2 of them weren't cold at all since they had thick coats. I was getting ready for my wedding at the time so my wife and I began planning our wedding since our schedules didn't allow us time together to plan it. We didn't have a generator or gas in our house so we had to deal with the rolling black outs. It was wild to see that El Paso was not affected by the storm at all, but all the news and press from our Governor didn't really help either. It was a huge blame game but I had no idea about the house bill being passed. This was a great piece of content, thank you.
@deeznoosh no I know that they controlled how much each provider would pay for electricity and this impacts the cost for the consumer regardless of the company you had. If they were connected to ERCOT, your bill would increase.
I still have PTSD from this ice storm. I live in an all electric house. The power was out for 6 days. It was 32 degrees in the house by day 3. You could see your breath inside the house. We have a pool and my daughter and I had to go out every few hours to break up the ice so the pool wouldn’t crack. I tried to use the propane heater on the pool and it blew up. I have since bought a very expensive generator and a propane fireplace. Every winter now I’m terrified that the power will go down again.
Welcome to poor people’s winters in Britain (minus the pool). Can’t afford gas (if there is any) and certainly not electric heating. You learn very fast to live and sleep in one room, dress in layers, and use hot water bottles to stay warm. I have a coal fire and I don’t care what environmental laws they pass, they’ll take that fire from my cold, dead hands - sometimes it’s the only heat, light and cooking facilities we can afford.
Rather than buying yet more technology that you're reliant on for your survival, you'd have been better served to learn self-reliance. You all go into hysterics when the grid goes down because you're helpless as infants. Humans survived for 99.9999% of their history on earth without electricity, yet you hapless and helpless moderns consider yourselves superior to them.
I'm sure that's how many states view themselves and how they're organized. If they're sovereign states, then what happens elsewhere won't happen to them, right? But the opposite can happen and they get toasted. Similar to how many Americans talk about their own rights and autonomy, but when something bad happens to them, they're all about "you need to help me".
I live in Monterrey, Mexico, a city 2 hours away from the border. This city is known for having temperatures of about 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, so I’ll never forget the 14th of February of 2021, it snowed like I have never seen in my life
Yeah that was a rough time. It started out so beautiful too, the first snowfall was magical and I finally understood why people love it so much. But it soon turned bleak after we lost power. Strangely, some places, like our apartments, were without power for days (aside from a precious few minutes every few hours), whereas other homes in our city never lost power. Without power we were unable to cook, so we either had to eat things that required no cooking, or risk going out on the roads to pick up food from a restaurant that still had power. We tried making a fire in our fireplace to keep warm, but the effect was limited. Our insulation was just too poor and the fire was not hot enough. The apartment got down to at least the 50s so we just tried to bundle up with blankets as much as possible to sleep. Then one morning we woke up to a burst pipe, so after cleaning that up we were without water for a number of days, until maintenance could come and fix it. Until then we had to flush our toilets with buckets of pool water. Fortunately, there was little damage to our apartment, just a couple of sections of drywall that needed replacing. All in all we got off relatively easy, but we found out just how underprepared we were. We've since stocked up on firestarter logs for our fireplace, and purchased a propane camp stove for cooking and heating water (in a ventilated area of course). We also take drip warnings during freezing temps much more seriously now - going from slow drips to thin streams, to make sure a pipe won't freeze again. I'm sure there's more that we could do, but even just those things would have helped a ton during that storm. I really hope Ercot is ready for the next one, but I have my doubts.
I was living in Austin at the time. Fortunately, the house I was in never lost power. We were served by a local electric cooperative. A lot of people within a few miles of us did not fare so well. I have pictures of the snow and ice all over everything, and I'd love to share them, but UA-cam doesn't have that option.
Having lived through this, it is weird to see this documentary. My son actually sent me the link. I didn’t even know a documentary had been done. Here in Texas we called this “Snowmaggedon”. This storm went all the way into Mexico too. Usually North Texas or the Panhandle gets snow/ice, but not all the way to Brownsville at the southern tip. I was so glad our new home was so well insulated. Without any heat, our house stayed above freezing on the inside. We put towels under the doors and in the window sills even though we have double panned storm windows. Just so now warm air leaked out. We were so layered up in clothes, we were thankful we didn’t have any bathroom emergencies as you would not have been able to get all your layers off in time. 😬Luckily we could snuggle in bed with our dogs and cats and lots of extra blankets.
I was there. Ercot had the audacity to say that they weren't responsible for over 200 deaths, saying residents should have prepared for snow, which is bull because it just happened. Ercot was given immunity because of the billions of dollars they take by overcharging for electricity. 😮
I live in Roanoke TX and remember this event VERY well. We had no power for two days straight but we were definitely among the lucky few who were able to stay warm successfully. To this day, thats still the most snow I’ve ever seen in my life
Currently watching this during a blackout that’s been going on for a few days now after the hurricane that hit, my connection is cutting in and out as of right now but i was able to download this video to watch using youtube premium and this just feels so crazy to watch considering my situation. I remember when the freeze happened back in 2021 and to think we weren’t prepared for something like this again is crazy to me.
The mistake you are Making is thinking preparing is a "we" problem. Texas individualism means looking after you and yours. Any group larger than that acting in the common good has to be a church. Otherwise it's communism and Texas banned communism last century.
I'm from the Dallas/Ft Worth area I had never experienced that kind of cold! My electricity was out for days! Thankfully my friend had power and told me to come over I'm so thankful for that because it was absolutely brutal!
Other states have warned Texas of not winterizing their power grid. Texas thinks its too expensive for something that never happens. Until it does happen and they still don't.
Ah yes. Let us put a completely necessary service in the hands of companies that answer to no one but shareholders. What could possibly go wrong?! I hate that people died, but it takes that to remind people why those regulations were made and why we NEED to keep them. They were, and still are, written in blood.
That’s not how it works. Electricity companies are the “deregulated” portion of your comment, all they do is provide plans, rates etc. UTILITY companies actually manage the infrastructure. Retail Electricity Providers purchase power and sell it to consumers. Utility companies are HIGHLY regulated.
@@ccormx You're kind of arguing semantics. Utility companies are what transfer power between the regional entities at their borders. Utility companies own the transmission lines and substations that bridge Texas RE/ERCOT and its neighboring regional entities. They are the ones that enable importing of power, and regulations can limit or force that capability to import power as well as export it. Utility companies are the ones that route and switch the power to meet demand. Texas RE barely has any ability to import or export power, by design, by choice. If Texas had a regulation in place to force Texas utility companies to have higher interconnect capacity with neighboring states or even the 2nd entity in Texas, less lives would have been lost. The lack of such a regulation is why Texas RE is by far the most unreliable regional entity, it can hardly be said that they are even part of NERC due to their embarrassing reliability and compliance.
@@ccormx the utility companies were so regulated that they didn’t bother to weatherproof their equipment. They didn’t bother to sign up their powerplants as critical gas users with the gas companies. So the gas companies sent gas to residential homes instead who couldn’t use it because they didn’t have any electricity. During all of this, the electric rates shut up by 1000 times some utilities made their entire yearly income in just a few days. Meanwhile, Texans not only had to pay for that electric, but it didn’t stay so they had to repair their homes anyway. And they’ll be paying off those billions of dollars for decades.
Adding to that is the collective stubbornness and moronic distain of receiving the slightest help further serviced their already terrible infrastructure. It's a disaster waiting to happen considering the set playing field of Texas as a whole.
I live in Texas, i thought the freeze would never end since it lasted a whole week, the aftermath was just as bad with empty stores everywhere. I was one of the lucky ones to have power and hot water all week except for the last few days of the freeze power shut off for several hours it was because my apartment was on a priority node for my towns hospital.
I belong to an Electric Coop in North Texas, and they were doing rolling blackouts, with a 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off rotation. It got down to the low 50s in my house, but it didn't freeze.
it was only a week and it got this bad? That's wild, i'm so sorry- I genuinely thought it was like a month or something (from the uk, we haven't had a big freeze like this since I was a kid and I'm only 26)
We barely moved into our new home when it hit. I’m originally from the Northeast and even I wasn’t prepared. We were fortunate that we weren’t part of ERCOT (we were part of a small rural co-op) but we still lost power for eight hours. By the end of the outage, my husband was checking the temp of the water to see if we needed to winterize (shut the water to the house, drain it, and add antifreeze to all the s-pipes and toilets). We were digging out our RV antifreeze when the lights came back on. Not sure what we would have done if it were for more than a few days. A week is crazy! Some people probably still haven’t recovered, I bet.
@@queenb67 same here. Tri-County. Never even flickered a single time. However just 1/4 mile around us, all directions, power was out for many others. The city water froze, but our family was smart enough to fill 25 5 gallon buckets with water. My internet even stayed up the entire time. Co-OPs are nice.
I actually experienced it. I was 9 years old, branches falling down everywhere, night temps about 10-15F, it barely got above freezing... Luckily, we had tons of food so we were fine, we just had to stay indoors for about a week
I lived in The Colony, Texas at the time of these events. Around 30 or so miles northeast from Fort Worth. I was left without power for 5 days and on February 13, 2021, I was taken to the emergency room for frostbite and hyperthermia. 3 years later and I'm okay now. This was one of the scariest moments I have had to go through in my life. Prayers for anyone who lost a family member or had one injured during these tragic events.
Most homes here are not built for the temperatures we got during that storm. Mine doesn't have a chimney, at one point it was 5° in my bedroom because the power had been out for almost 24 hours. the second cold night i used my sleeping bag in bed and stayed warm all night unlike the first. Its a must have imo
@@asrr62 stop being toxic why are the other gen alfa kids are so toxic like gee he might actually had a hard time u dont know u could be hurting someone's feelings u dont know who he is if u dont know who he is why u being so mean to him
Contemporary homes are so thin they practically barely count as shelter. They may protect you from the rain or snow but whatever temperature it is outside is what it will become inside without powered heating or cooling.
As a Canadian, this is so shocking to me.. it was -60c (-76F) here for a week last year and we didn’t even blink, still drove around etc. but I understand an unprepared grid caused this mess.. just crazy…
It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd learned from the two previous times it happened. But big business only cares about profits...people be damned.
I mean we don't even have real winter clothes down here. I wore a jacket 3 times in the past year and it was just a sweatshirt type hoodie. We don't have the infrastructure or even the basic supplies for cold
@@ShinigamisBladeYou can layer your clothes. I moved to a much hotter climate recently. Negative temperatures are rare here. So didn’t bring much of my winter clothes with me. First winter I’m here it dropped to -10 (first time in 13 years) and kept dropping to it at night for two weeks (first time on record), yet I didn’t felt cold once. Also no burst pipes, no houses on fire, no pileups, electricity and water went out a dozen of times, though. I was told by locals about possible outages, everyone was expecting it. Every building has a tank and a pump for water. Main line is drained by utility company to prevent it from bursting if freeze hits and our outdoor plumbing has a drain valve - it opens then there’s no pressure in the main. The tank, the pump and piping for them are either inside or heated. About summers, for the first time in my entire life I’ve seen words “sizzling sun” in a forecast. First summer I’ve learned, the next I was prepared. It hit 41 degrees mark two days ago by the way… So definitely have sympathy for the children, but everything else is on people being stupid or reckless, or both.
As a Canadian my mouth was hanging open. This is just another winter Tuesday here. It’s hard to imagine how it must have felt for people to have felt it for the first time. 47 years of winters isn’t enough experience sometimes let alone zero.
my mom had to go to the hospital for surgery the day of the freeze, at like 5 am. My brother and I were already sleeping in our parents’ room for warmth, and while she was safe in the hospital we’d call her all huddled up in her room, and she’d see our breath. We had to pull out our old heavy winter clothes and went over to our neighbors bc they had a working fireplace. it was crazy
Thankful the Kroger I worked for at the time was more prepared than the state. Took care of their employees and everyone else in the area the best they could during the power outages.
Missouri resident for 30 plus years and was visiting my then gf at the time in ATX and had a feeling I couldn't shake that I needed to be there a day early. For me I've been through countless severe grid shut down level winters so it was shocking to see how unprepared a people and city could be. What would have been another December day in MO was a catastrophe for atx. Oddly enough her apartment side had heat and electricity while the other half had water. I had none of my regular preps so we melted snow for drinking water, and took apartment complex pool water for toilet and sponge batheing water. Thankfully we had enough groceries but she was a anxious mess because of her newborn.
I survived Hurricane Katrina & Rita in Louisiana. As a United States Marine, I survived going thru boot camp at Paris Island during the summer! BUT This was by far the worst natural disaster I had to endure in my life!! Texas let us down.
I’ve been through Hurricanes here too. I never lost power in 2021. It was only below freezing 2 days. I never turned the heater on in my house. Thermostat read “55.” That’s perfect temps for me. Tshirt weather. Born and raised right here. We’ve had way worse ice storms than 2021. I was out jogging in that 15 deg weather in 2021. It was beautiful, then hot again a couple days later. I love that cold.
We froze in Louisiana too but for some reason people only care about Texas. We were out of power for 10 days with a broken generator, car wouldn't start, no cell service or internet. I realized if I needed help I would have to walk to find it.
I remember this like it was yesterday. I live in Irving Texas and my power was out for a week and a couple of days! It started February 15th, 2021, I will never forget. I'm single, live by myself in a 1 bedroom apartment. I remember sleeping in sweats and 2 coats wrapped in my blanket for over a week, it was freezing! I did not eat and drank bottled water. It was hard, but I made it through because my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was with me the whole time. I survived that whole thing. My whole apartments power was off, but my friend about 2 blocks away their power was on. ERCOT had different locations where they would have people to have power and some don't, they would regulate it back and forth, but my apartments never got it the whole time. I was so glad that it was over! And all the deaths i heard that came through that week. I thank my Heavenly Father that im alive! That was a crazy time.
I will always remember that date Feb 15 2021 we where trying to celebrate my little sister's birthday in the cold we light up fire to keep us warm and everyone covered with blankets trying to not worry so much about what was happening and just celebrate my sister's bday. .
Amen. I was in Dallas and had just moved back here the week before. I lived in California, then moved here and the weather was very nice. Then this happened 😂
I was renting a crappy little apartment in Crowley TX at this time. Power went out for 19 hrs but thankfully that crappy little apartment had a fire place and I had a lot of firewood on stand by. Just me and my pit bull sitting beside each other covered up watching the fire and staying warm.
Growing up, lived in tiny but awful house with no real rooms. The windows were busted, the front door was broken, there was no back door as the back of the house was too rotten to support it. My family and I slept in the front part of the shack we called a house. We were too broke to afford any sort of air conditioner or heater, but what we did have were living "heat packs" (dogs), and plenty of bricks and fire wood to make a furnace in the crappy shack. The only good thing about the house was the solid foundation, the floor heated up quick and stayed hot forever. Our dogs kept my tiny feet from getting frostbite every year. This time though I am living in trailer house that has no drafts and I made it through the cold nights with just a couple blankets and 2 pairs of socks. Thankfully I wasn't still in that busted house when this storm came.
Ayoo!!! I remember the freeze. Me and my family set up a tent around the fireplace and camped out the worlds smallest apocalypse. I still got a cup of ice from the freeze, has a leaf in it. I call it “cryo leaf,” it’s actually still green to this day.
Didn’t expect to see a disaster that I actually lived through on this channel. I remember my dad burning scrap wood in the fireplace so we could stretch our firewood supplies, and moving all the food in the fridge into the snow so it wouldn’t go bad. Crazy times.
The Racoons: 🤤
They freezing too lol@@Andy_the_Collector925
Bizarre, isn't it?
I "lived" through this, nothing changed except my energy bill going up for the month.
Same. In Dallas, and didn’t have it near as bad as some. Neighbors in my apartment complex came together to help each other out with water, batteries and flashlights, food, and use of microwaves (the buildings that had power. At the very least, I love that we came together as a community.
Its sad to see that many people dont know the dangers of carbon monoxide
It makes me sad that it isnt common sense. Something similar happened in upstate NY, I believe where a woman died from carbon monoxide poisoning because she slept in her car, but she didnt check to see if her exhausts were blocked by the snow. They were.
@@mikaross4671 Oof, actually that one might have got me too. Unless i was sleeping in my car because i was snowed in of course 🤔
It's equally sad that there are states that don't have a carbon monoxide alarm mandate. There are just so many things with this whole situation that could have saved so many lives.
@@ScaredyGinge This happened in the garage though. I don't know any states that have carbon monoxide alarms in the garage, seeing as, it's the garage. With cars that give off carbon monoxide.
@@kristinsreese And the little boy in the trailer? Would that not have possibly saved him?
You can't have this story without mentioning mattress Mack ( you even used a picture). He let hundreds and hundreds of people into his stores to sleep,eat and stay warm. He's truly an angel ❤.
Definitely
He is a treasure.
Mattress Mack is absolute a trash excuse for a human when you actually learn how he treats people when there's no good publicity in it for him. Ask anyone who's worked for him. His abuse and dehumanization of his workers-in public-is legendary.
He is still the most awesome person ❤
@@nicholasmorris3924my friend use to work for him and went to his welding school in the back of the store. He didn’t have any issues with him
I thank the creators of this video for not sugar coating this disaster.
The massive vehicle pileup was particularly disturbing, but something we need to see.
My co worker lived right by the highway. He said that all of a sudden he started hearing the sounds of tires squealing, cars crashing and screaming. He called 911 and he was told help was on the way. He heard this go on for hours. He said that’s the scariest thing ever.
Agreed. I worked at a nearby hospital that took a lot of the trauma patients.
I’ve had people in other states comment how all us Texans were mad that the don’t know how to drive their big trucks in the snow, when in all honesty I told them that Texas homes are built to keep us cool, not to keep us warm. Not to mention my nephew was not even a year old, other states people just don’t understand how horrific it was to be in it. Other people said that they “didn’t think it was that serious lol” but 92 is considered a heat wave where they live
@@Wontreplyeverdontbother black ice was the culprit and it happens up North as well. Can't see it until you're on top of it. Road conditions can change from wet to frozen in a space of a quarter mile (or less).
this was the one time that living in a tiny, crappy, run down apartment actually wound up working in my favor. it's a lot easier to keep a tiny room warm.
Small mercies can mean the world at the right time.
@@CassandraYreally have to live a life to learn to count your blessings. Many don't understand that concept. They live life, even successfully, yet lessons fly right over their heads.
yup, holed up in a room with every blanket in the apartment, layers, and another warm body. my apartment dropped to 36 degrees in the first night and i spent about 80-90% of the time without power and having to drive around the city to find some sort of food was so difficult, we were not prepared at all.
Had thick blankets on the door frame and windows, thick blankets over all the mattresses in living room floor, had thicker blankets tied off the hallways and stayed in room. Didn't know why they hell I collected blankets all my adult life until that day. Glad I was a blanket hoarder.
Yep i did the same. Used my grill to heat up bricks and then had the bricks in pots and pans in the room with me to radiate heat. Showed the trick to my neighbors and warned them about running grills or cars indoors. People panic in moments like that and make foolish choices. Gotta look out for each other. It was really sad when i got power back to go online and see all the cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.
i think it's genuinely insane that someone could call saying they heard their family member faint over the phone, suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, and no sense of urgency was used to save a family with reported children inside........
"Mhh no one answers at the door. I guess they aren't at home."
@@El_Presidente_5337 Exactly! Like _WTF_ is a wellness check good for anyway!?! They might as well have just drove by slowly, yelled "Aye! Anybody there!?" Not even getting out, and as they roll past the house 2 seconds later, just drive off and been like "Yup. We did a damn fine job on that one, boys! Let's go get breakfast!"
Criminal negligence
It was the person who put themself into the life-threatening situation that is to blame. No one else.
@@randymillhouse791 Imagine blaming the victims
Fort Worth here and we never lost power thankfully. Me and a buddy went around in his truck delivering food, water, and firewood to families in need.
🫡Based comrade move. Thanks comrades🫡
Based
Another Ft. Worth here, also never lost power (possible because we were on the same power grid as a hospital). My family opened up our home to people who were less fortunate. Scary times man, can’t believe it was 3 years ago
God bless you, gentlemen. Respect.
We lost power in Houston for 5 days. There were so many empty buildings in downtown with all the lights on 😒 while everyone else was left without electricity.
0:11 As a Texan myself (I live in Georgetown/Leander area) it does get extremely hot with highs in the 100s in the summer, but people don’t talk about how cold it gets. It gets down to the teens every winter.
You don't know heat buddy. Dallas gets hotter. Period.
@@PlasticStrws yeah i know
@@PlasticStrws🤣🤣Austin area is way hotter
Born and raised in leander here. I was in austin at the time
@@Eli-ni8usonly because its a city. The vehicles make it hotter.
The biggest punch in the face is that a LOT of this could have been avoided if Texas learned from what they had experienced roughly 10 years prior to this.
The Groundhog's Day Blizzard of 2011 was catastrophic to parts of the Texas Grid, so bad that the state of Texas had to get power from Mexico. The US Army Corps of Engineers told them they needed to winterize their power grid, extreme winter weather happens more often than people think. Texas straight up ignored that until it bit them in the rear end.
Capitalism doesn''t work if essential things are not in law. Recommendations do nothing when only thing companies care is money.
They still haven't learned. It'll happen again in 10 years lol.
Dude. The sheer amount of ignorance that is so common among people has never made sense to me. Like carbon monoxide due to indoor combustion is something I knew about as a CHILD. It's one thing for children to be ignorant because bad parenting, but it's a totally different thing for grown adults to be so ignorant.
@@SpaceRaptorJesusJedi I think a lot of people forget about that sort of thing because of how we get power and heat. It's not really an issue for most people and it quickly turns into an 'out of sight, out of mind' situation. Then you throw in a disaster situation that a lot of those people have never experienced and that's when things start to spiral. It's a damn shame more people don't take care to prepare for these times of situations BEFORE they happen. And many will not take steps afterwards since 'when will it happen again?'. Prepare like it's guaranteed to happen every year.
They did, they had the systems in place, they failed to maintain them.
I was working at a nuclear power plant when this hit, and the nuclear power plants nationwide were able to run at 100% throughout this, due to their design benefits. It was surreal -- because their input to the grid was so critical, absolutely nobody was allowed into the plant for anything except absolutely essential tasks for running the plant. There's normally people going in and out all day and night doing odds and ends, but for about 2 weeks our job was to just sit there, just in case something happened and we were needed.
It doesn't matter when the power lines snap due to ice
Texas is on our own grid, uniquely. So we can’t import electricity or export, I know those aren’t the terms but you know what I mean.
You forgot that some of the nuclear plants in Texas went down because their instruments weren’t winterized and froze shutting the plant down.
meanwhile here in australia..ffs
You probably saved many, many lives!
The most infuriating part of this is that during this whole disaster, the Governor was lying through his teeth about what caused it. That's unforgivable.
A politician lied? Well that's unheard of.
Sadly Texans were too blind to the events that they didn’t vote him out.
Texans weak control over their government only emboldened him
And he was in Mexico lol
Ted Cruz took his family to Cancun to sit out the freeze. When confronted he blamed his daughter. Still in office.
This channel really shows we are really peak incompetitance problem, the lack of responsibility feeling companies have throughout the decades. Is jaw dropping
No regulations because the politicians in charge are paid off. It's that simple.
I went through this while undergoing chemotherapy and my family had to constantly bounce me between homes just to keep me warm and safe from infection. It was a terrifying time in my household.
THANK THE LORD 4 UR FAMILY! AMEN!
I hope you're doing well?
that is horrible, I’m glad you had a support network and got the care you needed
that sounds absolutely horrible! we had to take in my great grandma during the freeze for the same reason.
How scary! I assume you're doing better now?
My friend lived through this. He was constantly connecting onto discord calls whenever he could because he was isolated and his area was heavily blacked out. Even to this day he still thanks me for being there to help him stay sane, I can only imagine the fear he must have gone through. We joke about it now, but back then I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the verge of tears.
Sounds like a biotch. It wasnt that bad we were stuck too and had covid.
Womp womp
@@CesarPreciado-s6xshut your goofy ahs up cesar
It wasn’t that bad 🤣🤣
Bruh it wasn’t even that bad and everyone acting like it was an apocalypse
People really have zero survival skills whatsoever
i remember the house being so quiet and my mom tucking me in with 3 blankets as a 16 year old.. i remember praying my mom was okay driving on the frozen roads to work, and my family lighting candles. texas was really not prepared lol
WTF your mom had to drive to work stil???
@@Saberking875many of us still were required to work. Amazing country with such amazing workers’ rights
@@nickthompson2023 IK we have the worst workers rights in the western world
You really don’t realize how loud your house really is until a power outage and it’s deathly quiet.
@@nickthompson2023i came here illegally when i saw 8 years old. Now i have DACA but it breaks my heart when i see veterans homeless or elderly people who live so poor. This is so wrong. The government aint doing right to all of the usa citizens. 😢 i always try to give my last money to them. One time this white chick was so high on drugs but had 2 dogs next to her. I felt so bad i just saw people pass by and didnt do nothing. I went inside to cvs bought some covers for the dogs and her another hispanic guy told me "thank you" i told him "i do what i can" honestly now a days people dont care about each other. We need to change.
My girlfriend was pregnant with our daughter at the time and was expected to give birth on the 24th that month but our girl decided to come early, while the worst of the storm was hitting, and I had to drive my girlfriend to the hospital. The only ones on the road that evening. Only to turn into a night in the hospital because she wasn’t dilated enough. We were discharged the next morning and by that evening it was time. But this time, the weather was worse and snow covered the freeway entirely. Being from a little ways north of Houston I never experienced driving in that kind of snow, ever. So I had to drive us again to her planned delivery hospital further into downtown Houston. After driving as quick and as safe as I could we managed to make it and get her ready for the delivery and 3 hours later we met our daughter for the first time. (She had a massive conehead lol) but as luck would have it, the lights in the hospital went out. Our first night with our newborn we were freezing and hoping she would survive the night. There was no water available in the building the entire 3 days we were there so she couldn’t have the afterbirth washed off until several days later. But all along the way we kept in heavy prayer and I believe it was due of God’s mercy everything worked out the way it did. She is turning 3 1/2 in a few days :) time sure does fly by
No one cares
@@kevinalexander1877 i care
How scary that must have been. The hospital didn’t have generators??
@@deelaynee They did but generators can fail -- big building. Plus, they had to turn off lights due to pipes bursting. The water was not drinkable. Had to have bottled water. The staff was low, too.
@@kevinalexander1877 Then don't comment. No one cares? A lot of ppl did during those days and even now.
the pileup mentioned near the beginning happened 5 mins away from where i live, my dad was supposed to have gone to work that morning but was told to stay home bc of ice on the roads, glad he listened and stayed home
I lost a good friend that day
I live in canada. Every year first bad snow storm. I stay home. There always crashes on the first day. Your dad did the right thing. People forget how to snow drive the first day.
@@michellestewart9197 one of the main issues is, here in Texas, we don't really get much in the way of snow. Instead, we tend to get freezing rain. It doesn't matter what kind of tires you have, or how much experience you have driving in snowy conditions, when you hit black ice there's really not much you can do. You can't tell the difference between simply rain-wet roads and black ice, and you're just screwed if you have to be on the road.
@@zarasha8220 you can’t prevent black ice but, good defensive driving skills helps stay in control. Like she said, people forget how to drive first day, and like you said, Texas doesn’t get it much. It sucks no matter what but looks to be an unfortunate situation with a bit of lack of knowledge.
@@zarasha8220can tell you I hit really bad black ice my first winter; absolutely wrecked my car. Got a drivers course and taught myself and practiced, hit black ice a few years later and I kept myself in control for the most part. you can’t completely gain control over it but there’s a few things you can do to help not just lose all sense of control.
My cats were so worried bout my siblings and I, they tucked into the blankets and tried to keep us warm. I will always remember that and all the stray animals we helped. My heart still aches for those who didn’t make it
They did not give a rats ass about you, they were trying to use YOUR warmth for their own survival.
When we had power outs the dogs and cats were allowed in our beds. The fishtank( 20gallons) lost all the fish do to heater going out.
But it was fun reading to cookie(dog) under the covers with a flashlight. And mischief (cat) kept my feet warm. ( had another cat on my neck till dad swiped it for sister bed)
We grew up with sleeping bags in the closet for power outs in winter.
I remember "Snowmageddon." We boiled water in our kettle for warmth and hydration, shared beds, and even drove around the pitch-black neighborhood with our blankets to warm them up before trying to sleep. I heard of people chopping up furniture for firewood and grilling food inside, leading to monoxide poisoning and fires. The first time we left the neighborhood after the storm, we were running low on food and ate at a local Vietnamese place. Everyone inside shared the same exhausted look one has after a fitful nightmare. The place was one of the only ones open after the freeze, so it'll always be an MVP in my book.
Snowmaggedon ROFLMAO - tell that to me once you spend some time in Fairbanks, Alaska for a winter......when your vehicle freezes up in a block of ice, the outside temps get closer to -20F or more and the snow is not going anywhere since the plows are not able to keep up with the snow itself......and this is a place that is used to having bad winters haha
ooo i got an idea! maybe have 2 cases of water and 1 weeks worth of canned food. so when shit like this goes down you are prepared and dont need to boil water
@arowhead9 I do those things, because I camp off-grid periodically. But many Texans are poor & live paycheck to paycheck. Stocking up is not a luxury they can afford. Nor is thinking your energy company, with a monopoly mandated by state govt, will not honor their OBLIGATION to provide energy ESPECIALLY at the time it's needed THE MOST!! Think... before you use snark to those who've SUFFERED, & some still not fully recovered, from the AVOIDABLE UNNECESSARY literal INCOMPETENCE of our State government. Grow up, or at least grow a heart! 💪
@@CG-Cowgirl reality doesn't care about any of that. you have the supplies to survive or you don't. sorry the world has hazards. survival of the fittest
@@arowhead9LITTLE BRO DOESN’T HAVE EMPATHY OR EVEN SYMPATHY ‼️🗣️❌‼️
I was living in Austin, in a Senior Community. What really impressed me, was how everyone helped one another. We really pulled together, sharing food, blankets, phones, etc.
So... The firefighters thought a wellness check was just knocking on the door and leaving if nobody answers the door??? Dafuq... That's just a ding-dong ditch...
That's what most "wellness checks" are. If you don't answer the door they just leave.
Really! If after being told by the family three times they were concerned about carbon monoxide dangers, the fire fighters didn't have the sense among them to think the people could be passed out??? I hope the family sued them for their stupidity.
I hate to be that person, but I hope that fire chief thinks about the way he spoke to that man on the phone for the rest of his life. There's a chance the mother and daughter could have been saved, especially knowing the father had fainted on the phone. Complete incompetency, imo.
the thing is that they can't break into the place. maybe look through the windows would of been better but not if the curtains were fully closed. there isn't much that could of been done if the person doesn't answer or no immediate evidence something is wrong.
@@KhanaHatake Different country, but in the UK during the ol' lockdowns, my next door neighbour had a welfare check. Three police officers arrived, spent half an hour knocking on the doors, the windows, anything they could do to see or hear anything inside and asking the neighbours if we had seen or heard anything recently.
After that half an hour they called for a locksmith and camped out front in their cars waiting and watching the building for any sign of movement, while occasionally coming back and knocking on the door. When it came to their lunch break they staggered it so there was one of them always present.
Three or four hours later, the lock smith arrives, opens the door and he wasn't home. I actually don't know where he was or what happened as he never came back. But it's scary to go from seeing how the police just hung around until they could confirm one way or another if he was in there and if he was alive or dead, and then you hear stories like in this video where the welfare check gets the no sign of life result, and the authorities just give up and leave.
On day two of this storm in Dallas I just had to get out of the house. I hopped into the car, mainly to get warm lol and went for a drive. It was like driving through a distopian scene in a movie. I was the only car on the road and I there weren't any people in sight. 7-11 was the only thing open and the guy inside was so happy to see me. He said that not a soul has come in all day. I talked with him for a while, bought a couple of things and went back out into the wasteland of Dallas covered in ice and snow. It was a surreal experience.
dang, props to the guys to keep working on such weather
Dallas felt so surreal those few days !!
Day after tomorrow type stuff sounds like.
thats how life in the winter is in northern europe every year
What happened to “Texas strong” had to cry for government assistance real fast 😂
I lived through this for over a week with no heat and no water. It was so cold in my house that all of the plants that I moved inside froze and died. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me alive was the three pups who laid under the covers with me to keep me and them warm. I lost all of the food in my refrigerator and two freezers. There was no reimbursement for food spoilage or frozen pipes. Our governor who’s in the pockets of ERCOT did nothing and our senator Cabo Cruz fled the state with his family to Cabo. What a POS.
The governor appoints ERCOT. It's not a company
Cancun
@@cyber8000😂😂 fr some people are so out of touch
Reimbursement? 😂
@cyber8000 Did u live in this?
I was 16 when this happened (I'm 20 now) it feels like an ancient memory. I remember it started on Valentines Day, the first time I've ever seen snow with my own eyes. It looked beautiful. Power went out for an hour or two in the morning, which prevented me from doing classes online due to covid still being high. It came back on, and class resumed as usual. It was a normal day besides the snow.
Woke up next morning, and before I could log on, all the remaining active electronics shut down, and I was super excited not to log on to school today. It was still snowing, more than yesterday. I wanted the power to come back on after school hours passed, but it never did. We didn't have power for 3 days. Our food turned rotten, and we had to throw it all away. We boiled water to keep us warm along with our gas-powered stove. The nights were the worst. Me and my older brother would stay up late doing whatever we can to pass the time. Neither of us could sleep in the cold or warm up in our beds at night. I still remember when both of my brothers and I were in our dining room at night wanting this to end and after chatting for almost an hour. We hear a fan go off in one of our rooms before the light turned on and we all hurdled with joy like idiots glad to see it all end. Our fear was that it doesn't go off again. It didn't, but it was still cold outside, but the snow was melting already.
I remember this happening. I was in my kitchen when I heard on the news that there was a risk of a blackout. Power went out that same night. We went over 62 hours without power. I'll never forget sitting outside in my car eating olives and cold black eyed peas.
I’ve went a week without power in WA couple years back only places That don’t experience it that often are states that actually deal with bad winter storms n what bit
I was out of power for 5 days during Hurricane Irma in Florida. It was hot and difficult, but humans were/are made to persevere. And we always do.
@@FirstLast-hs4gw Jesus christ dude your lack of self awareness is showing off big time. All I’m hearing is you’ve used basic information and practical knowledge as a way to inflate your ego so you can justify looking down on people and make light of a serious situation that they had to deal with while also blatantly disregarding their state’s lack of infrastructure and general readiness for such a wild event. This might come as a surprise to you but no one else is you so they won’t ‘disregard useless emotions’. You sound like an edgy child. Rarely will people even begin to consider your opinions when you sound like a stuck up know-it-all, again, something teenagers and children do not understand.
I was cooking food by the barrel outside in the backyard for a couple days/nights and drinking the heck out of my dads booze 😂 my lips had never been so dry and cracked
Cold black eyed peas with olives as a side or garnish now that's Texas surviving and initiative. Bet those peas were the best tasting blackeyed peas you ever eaten. Glad you persevered. IT was really something wasn't it?
i've been told stories of people finding their grandparents frozen solid in their chairs, that shit is heartbreaking
Chilling story
@@SharmV Uh, no pun intended, right?
the fact that people actually made fun of that shit is even worse
At least freezing to death is one of the more peaceful ways to go.. right?
@@redline1916Fr it leaves me frozen in my seat
I remember this horrible week. We fully recovered within in a month. However, the whole no power, 5 blankets wasn’t enough to keep warm was horrible. Even though we lived in a small apartment, for us it wasn’t enough to keep fully warm. Dogs almost passed but made it through. My father almost got hypothermia but we acted quickly so he was fine. We could see our breath inside our home, the ice was making its way through our window and door. It was horrible. At some point we had to chip off the ice with a hammer to go out and charge our electronics through our cars. I will never forgive people in charge who kept lying telling people that the power issue would be solved or be back by midnight. I lived at the time, in a neighborhood considered “low class” and our power was gone for the entirety of the storm. My friend who was a house sitter at the time, was house sitting in the nicer neighborhood and she explained that the power went out for 30 mins and that it never went out again after that. The whole situation was horrible. My heart will always be with the families who lost loved ones during this storm.
In almost any disaster, service providers will act much quicker and give more priority to higher income areas. It's horrifying whey you realize your life can be in danger because of class inequality.
It truly did suck. My family and I live in a middle class neighborhood, but we were still out of power for about a week. We live near an upper class neighborhood and I remember seeing that all the houses there were dark when we went drove to get food. I think it's basically just luck of the draw for if you happen to be connected to a good power grid. I just don't want you to feel bad that you were excluded for that reason.
that’s heartbreaking! 💔 i live in a lower income area and we only lost power for less than 5 hours at max, so sad you had to go through that
Five blankets?? It was colder in my house that's for sure, but I just put on a hoodie and I was fine...
As someone who has always lived in the northern part of USA, where winter can see tons of snow, and super cold weather. I forget just how much an entire city can turn an every day situation we deal with everyday in the north, and is a no biggie occurrence, into a catastrophic nightmare and a literal life threatening situation for its residents for another area of the USA that isn't used to it.
It's just crazy.
Let's see how well your state fares when the entire state, being the second biggest state in the nation and who knows how many times bigger than your state, is frozen over and you have no electricity, because the extra reserves of gas froze too. It was bad and an epic scale, not because the people were stupid. When it's as overwhelmingly bad, there's only so much you can do.
Oh, and Texas gets snow. We're used to it. Just not the entire state, even down to the coast. Educate yourself. But when you've got a state as big as Texas freezing over in its entirety, it doesn't matter how used to it you are, it's going to stretch the resources to the limits.
@@aewtx we'd fair just fine... The entire country of Canada does just fine too, every year, and that's 30x bigger than texas lol. Your argument makes no sense..
And you took offense to something really stupid as well..
@@Cramblit You basically called us all stupid. Yeah, let me call you stupid and see how offended you get. Look at you, you're up in arms already too. :rolls eyes:
And that is Canada. Not quite the same. You're not even at the same level as Canada.
@@CramblitYour original comment was really dumb. Just so you know, you haven’t felt cold - where you live isn’t “cold” - there is always a place that’s much colder. Also you live in your colder northern area with thinks like heaters, etc - the problem wasn’t just the temperature number, it was how it shut down electricity throughout the area. Get help
@@wbae1340 Weird that you're *still* offended that he just told about climates and preparedness.
Regards, a North European (from a Nordic country).
2:02 i hada friend who lost 3 family members in this accident. She was traumatized and spent 5 months in a psych ward and never fully recovered. We graduated last year, hope her and her family are ok
😢😢😢😢😢😢
As someone living in northeast USA, I remember hearing about this when it happened, and there's still a lot in this video I HAVEN'T heard. Hearing about the way people were treated is heartbreaking, especially that man trying to check on his family and first respondents doing essentially nothing for HOURS. Price hiking during this event was awful too. The cold is no joke. Even if you think you'll never see snow, it's NEVER a bad idea to learn about cold and snowstorm preparedness.
What's even worse is people are making fun of this in the comments section, I thought you americans were "united."
@@redline1916 I am sorry, do you not know what kind of election we have going on this year?! 😂 United? Oh, that is cute, lol!
I lived through this and there was stuff in here I hadn't heard about!
@@redline1916Sadly it isn't like that anymore, only half of us are I'd say smh.
Part of the problem with having every service be private and little/no safety nets is that when a disaster occurs, the company still puts profits first. Having a high demand for heat and being the sole supplier to 90% of the State gave them a unique monopoly, and they used it to their advantage. And being immune to lawsuits meant there was nothing to put pressure on them to not do what they did. And I bet moving forward there still won't be any measures put in place to limit or restrict the amount they can charge or change their prices in a short period of time, so if it should happen again they will price hike again, no doubt about it.
During this total frozen outage, me and my father would heat up in the car, watch movies and eat snacks, and honestly it’s one of my favorite moments I spent with him in an outage.
EXPERIENCING HARD TIMES W/ LOVED ONES CAN B BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE!
That’s cool that you found something positive in such a dire circumstance.. we need more that in the world 😊 hope you’re doing well fam ❤✊🏿
@@terripeterson4533 your very right!
I was just writing about my positive experience. Yeah, it was cold. But man I loved being by our fire with my kids and wife. And we played games. I got to introduce my kids to the ancient art of POGS.
from the dfw (arlington) and when our power went out my mom courageously drove us all the way to lancaster where my aunt had power and gas because she lived nearby a hospital. what was typically a 25-30 minute drive took 2 hours!!! a bunch of my family members piled into her house and we just spent the week at her house. my birthday was the 12th but i can't even remember what happened that day... and i'll never forget how i had to leave my fish, paris, who either froze or starved to death.
rip to her:( for me, that week was filled with overall joy and happiness (that we had no school), but i was only 12 and much too
young to understand the severity of the situation. however, the now 15 year old me, has realized just how privileged i was to be garnered with such a joyous experience during such a time of difficulty. it really shows how maturity can change the way you see an event. my heart goes out to all the victims of the storm and i hope their families have, and or, can someday find peace
Why couldn't you take your fish? That's terrible!
I live in Houston. The power was out in my area for about five days. It was 13 degrees. I've never been more glad that I collect comfy blankets. I'm disabled so I work from home around 70% bedbound and have to take medication to not sleep for days at a time. When I heard how cold it was going to get, I piled all of my blankets on me and while the power was still on I filled a gallon jug with hot tap water and put it under the blankets with me along with a bunch of non-perishable food. It was so warm and cozy that I had to lift the blankets to let some cold air in occasionally. Just like camping with lots of sleeping. I wondered if most people just didn't own a lot of blankets. Weirdest thing I learned was that some computer mice break easily in the cold. I had to buy a new one because somehow it permanently broke my mouse wheel. At least the food in the fridge was okay after all that time!
I was just wondering if I'd have managed okay due to my similar set up, I didn't even notice covid until a couple of months into it.
@@jasperzatch610 I felt really fortunate that I didn't have much preparing to do for it, because I'm one of those 'be prepared for anything' types and just don't have the money to do so most of the time. I had some kind of mean humor around Covid time because my friends always tell me how nice it must be to be able to do for the most part whatever I want at home all the time, and I've told them yeah it seems nice until you realize how very not-quaint it is not being able to go anywhere when you want to.
They've always told me yeah yeah no problem, I'd deal with it for the freedom. Covid rolls around and suddenly they're wailing ermegerd being stuck in your house all day is sooo lame! How can anyone staaand it? Yeah, I thought so... It's weird to hurt being envied for things you don't want for yourself.
In any case, I hope you don't have to ever worry about dealing with such disasters!
My thermostat said 43 degrees….
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
Same, my family has those heavy mexican blankets so we tried to use them as double insulation on the walls, charged powerbanks when power came back for like 30mins, and ran off ramen boiled off a small pot from a generator and hot plate. It sucked so the best thing we did was 500pc puzzles and to pass hunger just sleep through it but definitely had it better than others who were truly struggling, now I buy all sorts of tools to be prepared.
I'm from SA,TX. I remember being at home with my family, and we were so excited for the snow to come. It never shows here. On day one, we were having so much fun, missing school and work and having fun in the snow. Around day 3, we had enough. We didn't have electricity or running water for like 2 days.
Same I'm from south Texas and I've only seen sleet, never real snow, we were so excited, and we didn't even get any
same here i was really excited but by day 2 i knew something was wrong
Lucky everyone in San Antonio is fat all that lard kept them warm.
Best 7 days ever for me bc no school, we got snow, and we didn’t lose heat water or electricity
@@jacksonkoeppel2533 Man ur lucky we literally froze for four days straight and didn’t even get snow, it hasn’t snowed since 2004 apparently but i wasn’t born for another half decade after that soo
Our town had a few deaths because of this. One guy brought his grill inside to warm part of the house at night and the whole family suffocated. Another family had their home burn down due to using grilling coals in his fireplace that wasn't rated for it. Then a hotel in town (killeen) burned down and the pipes were frozen so they had to let it burn. At one point Lowes started to sell all their lumbar for people to burn, they had a line out the door. It was pandemonium, our house went over a week with no running water as the main pipe feeding the subdivision had burst.
Bringing a grill inside to heat the house is some big brained thinking
Standard in America when 1/4th of your people are mentally not all there or as you call “slow”
@@tomahawk7259 but not big enough to remember that carbon monoxide exists.
Grill in the house is the most Texas way you can die to be fair
That is so funny
My cousin almost died in a blizzard inside the car. Someone saved him, and I'm eternally grateful for the person who saved and sheltered him.
I lived in Austin TX when this happened. My apartment didn’t have a fireplace so I survived by using my backpacking gear and my snow skiing clothes. Thank the good Lord, I had a couple of goose down sleeping bags, and backpacking fuel/stove and backpacking food. Feel bad for my neighbors who didn’t have winter gear like I had. I feel for those who died during the winter storm of 2021.
It was 28 degrees continuously indoors during that time but I remember going out during the day into the empty streets of Lamar and Congress. Absolutely surreal. Then walking along the river park and coming across a body under a small makeshift tarp. Haunting to say the least. The homeless population definitely had it hard during those times.
@@Sun33daze yes the homeless had the worst of it during those days of below freezing. They have the worst of it when the temperatures are consistently above 100 everyday. They never can catch a break.
I live in Atlanta, GA and was visiting my boyfriend in Texas when this happened. We didn't have heat or power for four days and my flights kept getting canceled. Luckily, his roommate has a backup battery that used solar power to recharge so we could have our phones charged and a small heating plate to warm up canned soup. We wore lots of layers of clothes and drank alcohol just to stay warm. They didn't have a fireplace or portable heaters.
It was quite the experience but we were a bit better prepared than most people. They had plenty of canned food, blankets, and clothes to bundle up. My heart goes out to the people that lost loved ones.
Just an FYI....alcohol only provides the illusion of warming up. It actually drops your core temperature and that's why you think you are warmer, because it is about the difference in temp that affects our perception.
Alcohol doesn’t help lol
Most Texan response I’ve heard 😂 lucky the storm didn’t last couple more days
I lived in Southeast Texas when this happened, And boy was it crazy. We literally were stuck at houses for days. Most of the roads were frozen, nobody could get out, and we were completely running out of food supplies. And what’s worse, my backyard roof collapsed. So much ice and snow was building up on it, until the point where it couldn’t hold on, and then it just collapsed. I tell you from experience, it was the worst thing that ever happened to us.
Born and raised in Dallas. I remember in the early 2000's growing up we had freezing temperatures, but this, this right here was unheard of! I worked 12 hr shift after pipes started thawing as residential properties were being flooded (plumbing work) residents went weeks without water as we worked to get water up and running. I prepared for this storm and friends and family were telling me I'm exaggerating. I had weeks worth of fuel for my generator, food, and propane cookware.
As someone from europe: This was absolute nuts.
Seeing this whole scenery fold out LIVE on the other side of the world, realizing that these people basically have no way to help themselves, has changed me in some way im not able to explain.
I cannot remember if it was Texas or another state, but there was a story of a couple of tourists only surviving because a family let them in.
I’m from TX and lived through this. What was nuts was I went out and drove around to warm up in my car and no one was out. It’s like every living soul disappeared. I luckily had a fireplace in my home and I chopped wood and slept with my dogs to stay warm and not freeze to death. I was without power for over a week in -10C. I grilled outdoors, made cowboy coffee, and melted snow for water. Crazy times but I survived.
I know how you feel; I felt the same way when we heard about the thousands of people that died last year because of that heatwave and the wildfires it caused.
We work in 110° F (44°-46° C) temperatures even still at 3:00 AM at night at the production facility I work at here in San Antonio; it rocked the shit out of me that so many people were dying from something we're used to.
@@thetapheonix I lived in the Dallas area and in my town you couldn't even see where the roads were, it was like gone.
Middle class here not rich. Living in Dallas Texas, and we were fortunate to get through the disaster with no issue at all. My family always stock up groceries every week, we always let the water run during freezing temperatures, and I didn’t knew how bad it was when seeing this video, because I still went to work everyday (yes I drove on the ice, but very slowly). Most coworker said they had no power at their home, so again. We were fortunate compare to many who suffered.
Oh, we always had power and didn’t mind paying what the bill was.
Remember this November CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
Upper/middle class here our whole neighborhood (Preston hollow) and surrounding ones had power where were you at?
my grandma somehow had power in her apartment, here in the rgv
i live north of dallas and i was in a similar situation
My personal experience with this freeze: a roommate just moved in and got settled, they were a coworker of fiancee and I, other roommate's dog gave birth to puppies. First day of the freeze we try going to work, keyword try. 2nd day water no longer works. For the rest of the week we are trapped in this house unable to work with the only silver lining being we still have power. I scooped up ice from outside and boiled it just to have water. Me and the new roomie get closer as friends and i adopted one of the puppies. The puppy is now three years old. It was one hell of a greuling week but our job paid us in compensation.
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F-TEXAS I'M OUT
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F*CK TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
@@mrtaxi204 YES! CANCUN CRUZ!
As someone who loves your channel and had to evacuate from Houston during this event, it’s absolutely wild to see it on your channel!!
Fortunately, I grew up in Alaska and I had recently moved from Wisconsin, so as soon as all of the weather alerts started going out, I rolled up a bunch of towels, and lined the doors and windows as best I could to insulate. I got my dog and the four month old kittens I had recently rescued and piled them all in my room on my bed with all my blankets when the power went out. It got cold pretty quickly - it was mid-50s Fahrenheit in my apartment when I left, and I don’t know how low it got before power came back. My dog and I would’ve been rather cold and uncomfortable but fine, but the kittens were young and rescues and they started getting too cold for comfort. Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to replacing my hardcore winter tires with something more appropriate for Texas yet, so I loaded up the animals in my car and drove (carefully!) to my mom’s place in San Antonio.
Edit: to clarify, most of the roads were frozen and black ice was everywhere. The only reason I felt comfortable evacuating was because I grew up driving in ice and snow and I still had my Wisconsin winter tires. It was still nerve-wracking - obviously, there wasn’t salt or sand, or anything on the roads like you usually get up north, and I had to stop and help several people who had spun out.
As one happy note in this whole mess, though - two of my rescue kittens were born to a stray mom that we hadn’t yet managed to catch and fix. She was pregnant again, and a good Samaritan found her and brought her inside when temps got bad. Mama cat gave birth during the freeze, I adopted her trio of kittens (half-siblings to two of my rescues), and we finally got momma cat fixed once the trio were weaned.
Thank you for being such a wonderful human. We need more people like you.
@@kateg7298 this silly website keeps deleting my comments for some reason, but thank you very much, that’s very sweet of you to say!!!
Ok, how can bots go ballistic in comments, but I post ONE pic of my cats and all my comments are nuked lol. Was trying to send you a pic of the cats now, Kate, (bc they’re cute as heck) but I guess not lol.
@@kateg7298 anyway, even if sending you a pic of the cats didn’t work, I wish you all the best and I hope you have good fortune throughout your life.
And if you ever meet anyone in Colorado looking to adopt a cat, send them my way bc I’ve moved up here and I foster now lol.
I woke up one morning during this storm with water pouring into my master closet through the overhead light fixture Fortunately, I did not lose much in my apartment. But other apartments in my complex were totally destroyed and had to be gutted. It took a year for all the repairs. I was 81 at the time and I really don’t know what I would have done if I had not had family nearby. I called my son and he told me to pack a bag; he was on the way. I spent the next ten days with him and his wife. Although we had rolling blackouts, they had plenty of food that did not have to be cooked or could be heated quickly. And they had a gas fireplace that we were able to use. They were both able to work from home so they were able to spend a lot of time at home. I was so lucky to have them.
I spent 2 days preparing before the storm came. I cleaned the carb on my generator and made sure it was in working order, got 20 gallons of gasoline for it, picked up 3 propane tanks and a propane heater, winterized my house as well as I could manage, stocked up on groceries, filled up a 40gal plastic trash can with water, etc. We never lost power at my house thankfully, I had one pipe freeze and burst under the house but managed to catch it pretty early and cap it off. It was actually a fun time for me just staying home and playing in the snow for a week. It's tragic how many lives were lost and the suffering that a lot of people went through but I'll always have good memories of this storm personally.
You’re not like the other girls
I was lucky enough to never have lost power, have a pipe burst. I had to drive but never went over 20 mph and stayed very clear from anyone on the road. I saw trucks slipping and sliding going 50 not giving a fuck about other drivers, just wanting to do some snow drifting. Crazy how everyone experiences disasters in such different perspectives.
I only lost power for 5 hours and I was already stock with food so I was fine.
Good for you!
this is a lot like my experience -- my sister and i had so much fun out with our dogs in the snow, but i know not everyone felt the same way. i'm lucky that we saw this as more of a fun time than a terrifying one
I remember this time very vividly. I was a GM at a local restaurant and I remember looking at the weather forecast on a daily basis. I was shocked to see how cold it was supposed to get. I have lived here almost 40 years and we have never seen temperatures get to single digits, much less 0 with wind chill going below 0 degrees. It was a Valentine's Day I will never forget. The store shut down early thank the Lord, all though higher ups wanted us to stay open as late as possible as usual. The next few days were heart wrenching. The power was out at home, My sibling and I were contemplating on staying home or driving to our parents house close by. We were shocked and scared. We aren't used to dealing with deathly cold temperatures. We had to sleep in our cars because the generators were frozen and wouldn't start. Now granted we knew about carbon monoxide poisoning and our cars were parked outside in the country, not in a garage, but for people with small children, who are scared for their lives might not think clearly when the choices are: freezing to death, drive around treacherous roads risking your life, or keep the car on for heat at your home. Most people don't think to prepare for a catastrophe. It's all in the moment. No one expected to be without power for 4-7 days. Hell, I had to go back to work 3 days later. The 2nd day one of my family members had a mental breakdown and said they'd rather freeze to death in their house stunned me. Thankfully no one passed away in our family, but what a lot of northerners need to know, is we do not have adequate resources here for winter weather. We don't have snow plows, and the de-icing trucks we have to get from elsewhere. The worst is like this fine UA-cam video illustrates the state officials, energy companies, and even emergency response did not listen to the OBVIOUS WARNINGS. The Weather Channel was sending warnings, actual warnings a week in advance, and nothing was done. I'm not sure if they could have stopped the power outages, but they could have saved more lives instead of leaving us out to dry. Anyway ranting over hope everyone stays safe and Happy Independence Day!
Did you move out of Texas in 2011? This was an almost identical storm to the 2011 one.
Dont forget that our senator went to Cancun with his family during all this.
If you voted republican then you voted for the conditions you live in . 🤷 That's what y'all tell us about the crime in our blue cities. Maybe prepare yourself better.
@@TheRob81282 dude what? that is not related jesus
@@Mr___f I've lived here my entire life since 1986
I lived in a tiny town called Gunter TX at the time. (Pronounced Gun-ner by the townspeople) And this hit. Our hous had a separate heating system from the town and during the whole event, we had multiple pairs of elderly couples in our house who's homes had frozen. I wont brag about who my family saved, but be happy we did what we did.
A fun (but expensive) fact about the event was that soda cans left inside of automobiles froze and exploded, totaling a lot of cars and other vehicles.
What people don’t see is all of our livestock that died. Our roads couldn’t handle the cold and broke up and apart all over my area outside of Austin. I wrecked my truck but I had 30 horses without water and nothing would’ve stopped me from bringing it to them. We got lucky, others were not.
The price the serfs of Texas pay for their freedom©
I also live on a farm in Canada, and we regularly get power outages during the winter, (once, 6 in 5 weeks and one was 4 days long), -20 weather, and up to 2 feet of snow. When we have no power, we have no water from the well. I have to bucket water on a rope out of the well and trudge 320 feet to the barns to get the animals water. For heat we have a wood stove, so are okay for heat and cooking, and dollar store battery lights, but it is truly a pain to have no power and no water. I felt so bad for the Texas people and couldn't imagine having herds of cattle and livestock to feed and water.
@@ontheridge2019 A farm in Canada has the same reliable access to electricity as one of the largest cities in Texas.
There was a lot of talk about that among the farming community up here. They knew how hard hit you all were going to be.
One my cousins died from this, so his family member had to live through this with his dead body in the house. I was lucky that I had a bunch of warm clothes and stuff but my heart broke when I heard the news. I hope any families or friends who lost someone close are doing well right now.
Wow
Oh my gosh I am so sorry, that’s awful
I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy holy shit
I survived this disaster with my family, We burned newspapers, old books, and any safe material we could find to keep warm, we lost power, for over 2 days, luckily we were able to find warmth and shelter. I was with my parents and my sister, we had plenty of food from our garden and from previous groceries. I thank God everyday for keeping us all alive in the worst of times
Edit: thanks for the likes, I appreciate it
But, I have more information to add to my story, I remember looking at the outside temperature my phone and it read -2° F which is almost unheard of for Texas, some broadcasts that still worked reported temperatures as low as -28° F so, we were very fortunate
Close to 10 for me if I remember right... negative outside in a sub of ftw. With a shit power structure that my boyfriend 2 streets away got power in 3 days.
Welp I moved north east of ftw ... I'm expecting more hell
My son lives in Dallas and for whatever reason, he had power and invited friends to stay with them until they got their power back.
I hate to say it but our state government's denial of serious climate issues was a factor in this. Our summers are going to be getting hotter and our winters are going to be getting colder because of the impact our pollution has on our climate, and even if the current state government for some reason doesn't "believe" in it the least they can do is prepare us for disasters that might be due to repeat themselves sooner than you think.
Make sure you rightly reward CANCUN CRUZ for his DELIBERATE ABANDONMENT OF HIS PEOPLE
@@ziggystarlordCANCUN CRUZ SAID F*CK YOU AND TEXAS; I'M OUTTA HERE
I was very lucky to be living on-campus at Texas A&M, which has its own power grid and generation (being a military school helps). I stayed in my dorm room and played video games for a week. I barely saw my roommate day or night, he was out playing in the snow with friends, a truck, and (presumably) several cases of beer.
The on-campus workers that kept us fed and safe have all my respect, all of them really stepped up.
Military kids get lot of favors in terms of higher life standards right from the begining. No wonder they get attracted to better and best life standards else where too. They deserve to get all that. Happy for you. 🎉🎉
I was in the thick of it, it started on a Sunday & stayed like that for a week & it was brutal! -3 to 0 for several days straight. My parents 68 years old say they have never seen such weather here 20* and we are dying here and only at night usually. The roads turned to ice skating rings. My son I started offering free rides, gas & propane service for people. Later we started just doing medical, elderly & essential needs first. It was rewarding to help many elderly people get to loved ones & see the relief in their face. We helped who we could along the way pulling ambulances, power utility trucks up hills & stuck people trying to get basic supplies. We slept only for 4-5 hours a day, ate what we could at gas stations and kept at it my son ran the navigation and decided who was priority (he hardly turned down anyone). We ended up getting a phone call about a hospital not having enough food because delivery trucks couldn’t make the drive, so we took our clean stock trailer & ventured to make the normal 1-1/2hr trip that ended up being about 5hrs one way. Then ended making another run to another one the next day. Many others that were brave enough to drive also helped & it was nice to see our fellow Texans jump into action without being asked to! People prep now when the forecast calls for cold weather.
As a Minnesotan I remember watching the news and being absolutely baffled. I couldn’t understand how people were dying in a storm that we have dozens of times a year up here. That was the type of weather where kids here would still go to school through. It was just so puzzling until I realized that none of the people who built the infrastructure there even thought about the possibility of things going even slightly wrong.
I've experienced a similar sort of thing here. The news will be trying to brew some panic over England getting a few days of below freezing temperatures, and I'll joke to my Scottish friends that it looks like I'm in for a cold week and they'll laugh back with, "ken we've had for a month? Stop being a big baby!" But then their friends from up in Norway laughs at the Scottish for being disgruntled at having to deal with snow and ice every winter, when it's just everyday life for them!
It's not just the infrastructure either, I've only met their Norwegian friends once, at their wedding, but they had quite the laugh at seeing some of us struggle to drive on the slippy roads due to the complete lack of experience dealing with the weather that bad to them.. mostly the English lot that chose to drive there. The way he tells it, in Norway you either become a Rally driver, or you due to a tree on the side of the road.
So for people living in what's basically blasting heat 99% of the time, that complete lack of experience dealing with that cold snap regularly enough, it led to far too many fatal errors.
Minnesota here also, I agree, then last year California got hit hard, now we are experiencing flooding and im impress that 100 year old dam still holds up, I don't wanna think what winter holds for us this year
Global warming caused it.
In central europe this would be a completely normal thing
Wonder what they would do in texas if they get 2 meters of snow
because.... you're built for it?
I was a delivery driver in this time period. I still remember the Thursday I had to drive out into some very curvy roads to make it to Hunt, TX. It went from a normal cold day, to water droplets icing the moment it settled. It was approx 35min from the office, and by the time I arrived at my destination everything was covered in a white filter. It was scary enough passing by this one icy bridge, but to have to pass by it 3 more times was something I'm lowkey traumatized AND amazed with myself with how I handled it. Luckily my co worker and I were always on the same page, so we tried lightening the mood by telling funny stories. With how top heavy the truck was I'm sure he was also scared that it could've gone bad any moment.
The funny part is that because I did an excellent job still doing my work, I was sure I would've gotten a raise after that, but no. Boss man said that if I wanted a .25 cent raise I had to socialize more with the other employees. That was the moment I realized that you should really put yourself above work sometimes
And your safety. I don’t care what job you have, it’s not worth compromising your safety.
Dude it was brutal. I was in 5th grade when it happened and I’m in high school now. Me and my little sister were freezing. We couldn’t sleep in our beds cause our rooms were to cold. We had to sleep in sleeping bags in the living room. We had to fill a agh tub with water before the freeze cause we never knew if the faucet would work. My mom distracted us from fear with the board game trouble. And without a shower in days I felt disgusting. I honestly thought I’d die from hypothermia. Nearby organizations passed out hot spaghetti to warm our bodies which worked. I was relieved when the freeze was finally over. I just hope that I’ll never have to go through that again
7 days no electricity. My 80 year old mom did not do well. She started having seizures she was so cold and upset. I had prepped as much as possible and had dripping water and was able to cook on my propane stove top. Charged my phone in the car. (We couldn’t leave because we were iced in. The car was in my carport and I was able to carefully get to it. I threw cat litter out on the ice.)Firemen were finally able to get to my door (on foot breaking the snow and ice)on the 5th day with wool army blankets, bottled water and snacks. Those blankets were amazing!
My house was 4 miles from our tiny town.
I moved us to way upstate New York and it’s awesome up here. It may get unbelievably cold, but they’re prepared for it. The electric company actually lets you know ahead of time about storms and messages to keep you updated.
That would NEVER happen in Texas under idiot Abbott. They also have utility discounts and programs for the elderly and disabled up here. Abbott canceled the discount program in Texas years ago. 😡
I'm glad to hear that you moved somewhere decent.
Why are you blaming abbot instead of the private actors that own Texas electricity?
I got hit pretty hard by this storm too. To our benefit, we were friends with a neighbor who had a fire place, so we went over there during the days to shelter around the fire as much as possible. We essentially lost all water and power, we would get 10 seconds of power every 2 hours. Couldn’t even microwave soup. So we lived off grill heated (grill was outside) soup and pancakes. Eventually they ran out of logs, and we were stuck back on our own. However, we learned that one of my schoolmates family house still had full power and water. We suspect because they were in the same grid as a fire station. They hosted us and a couple other families for a couple days, letting us have a warm place to be, hot food, and hot shower. My dad and I kept going back to our house periodically between all this to keep pipes from bursting and see if it was livable. I think the lowest the house got to was about 39 degrees. I remember waking up feeling like my bed was frozen. Luckily, after it all, we just had a few frozen pipes and boiled water for a few days. I also just so happened to have a heavy duty winter jacket because I was about to go to New York, so I was well prepared at least. It became a “grit and bear it” situation, but we got through relatively well comparatively.
I would also like to shoutout that an owner to a massive furniture store was able to keep the building powered with back up generators and opened the building and all the furniture to whoever needed it during the storm. I know it was a great place of respite for a large sum of people.
I was camping outdoors during the freeze. However, I was uniquely prepared for such events as deep winter camping at such below temperature is a hobby of mine, and I had the correct gear giving me that ability. At the peak of it, my logs read it hitting -9°F. The kid from Honduras who died was from my area and lived only minutes away. I still feel so bad for him and the others who lost their life and wish I would have been able to help everyone. I was the only person with running water as well on my road due to my preparations after everyones pipes burst, so we gave some of it out. I also did what I could to help others as much as I could to stop flooding once water pressure came back causing their pipes to burst(I used a t-bar to shut my water off once pressure dropped to prevent mine from bursting when pressure was reintroduced to my possibly frozen pipes). Ercot and Abbots' deregulations to the grid are heavily to blame for a lot of the suffering. I will never forgive them or the rest of Texas leadership. They still haven't prepared for future events as power has gone down due to heat as well. The grid repair cost was also put on consumers as well after Abbot said it wouldn't be. Wouldn't be surprised if he took a legal lobyist bribe after making that statement. My power bill before the ice storm was usually 170$ month. Power every month since then has been 380$ and looks to be going up again..
Rip to all those who suffered and mercy to those they left behind
Texas is a barbaric place.
It’s crazy because living in Maryland a year prior I watched on the news thinking “ what’s the big deal it’s just a little snow and cold”
But moving down to Texas and now seeing how unprepared the electric grid is here , how frequent power outages happen from minor weather , and the roads coupled with how “insanely fast” people drive down here , I can see how this became a disaster
The weather during this storm was NOT unprecedented. They have gotten prolonged below freezing temperatures in the past. So much of the disaster is due to horrifically inadequate weatherization of power generation, water mains, and building plumbing. Not to mention the completely isolated texas grid with the inability to import power. If this cold freeze happened anywhere else in the US, the worst that would have happened is roads being shut down.
This. And yeah, we seem to have one of these severe winter storms about every 10 years.
Let’s not forget that the state of Texas is run by and represented by a bunch of a-holes who are more concerned with calling anyone who raises the alarm about climate change and the need for paying attention to potential disasters like this “libtards” and “snowflakes” than actually governing for the safety and betterment of the people.
Let’s lay this right where it belongs: at the wheels of Gov. Abbott and all the elected and appointed officials who are more concerned with making sure women can’t get proper medical care than paying attention to the infrastructure necessary to withstand weather events like this. Wouldn’t want to have had regulations that didn’t allow for charging customers $10,000 for one month’s power bill (yes, those happened) get in the way of record profits for energy company shareholders.
We had a similar storm in the 90s.
Also, Texas has interstate power connections with all surrounding states that can be connected in emergencies, it was even mentioned in the video. Those connections were active during the event to purchase and import power from the western grid.
I live in NW Iowa and we were seeing -25F with -55 windchill during this time. Thankfully we didn't lose power (all it takes is that one tree branch) and my furnace survived running 24/7. After this storm I bought a generator just in case.
That is incorrect. You can search “feb 2021 power outage” + any state around Texas and see that most of the states in the middle of the USA lost power during those couple days. The media was very happy to target Texas though, so you only heard about Texas.
As a Texan this was very unusual to see snow and frozen roads. Luckily me and my family survived that disaster, rest in peace for those who didn’t.
Peace* but thank you for the laugh
@@Digimonisbetterthanpokemonoops my brain cell messed up 💀😔😭
😂😂 well I never thought I'd see this. Born and raised, man water pipe broke didn't have water for 2months. When the power was out I walked to my job(power was on to charge my phone) fell and ate it. BUT got to my restaurant job to charge our stuff (we definitely weren't gonna open)
Then people started knocking in the glass asking if we had food. We looked around the kitchen everything was fine....we smiled at each other opened the kitchen and just started giving out free food! It was crazy everyone was caught off guard. People asking to buy everything we said no it has to be able to go around. They gave us cases of beer 😂 and cash it was free. It was a unique moment for us helping our community.
2 months?! ☹️ Cool about sharing food though!
Sucks when it takes a literal disaster to bring humanity together. I'm a Floridian I see it after every hurricane
You are an angel on earth, which makes up for your sin of being a Texan. Bless.
@@gohawks3571Yeah I was getting those massive Ozarks jugs walking them down the street. 😂 It was "a time"
@@Lil-Britches Dang, dude! Must have looked ready for a Mr. Muscles competition after that! Wow... I would not have fared well, since I was sick during those times 😱
It’s insane that I live in Texas, remember this storm, and still didn’t know it was this bad. I’m so lucky to have gotten the mild end of this situation
I think most of us Texans have a degree of PTSD cause of this. Toilet paper, bread, and water frequently go out of stock due to any little thing now. As for myself, I decided to visit a friend in Galveston that weekend and decided I can beat the storm if I left early enough back to Austin. A 3 hour trip took 2 day, and I nearly got stuck (almost died, I'm sure) on the road. I had never been so scared in my life, I was 26 at the time and traveling alone.
Did it change any Texans feelings about their power grid setup?
Same. It was a defining moment in my community.
@@whitneylosh-johnson2420 my company decided to get a back up generator so if there is a power failure or ice storm again, we'll still be able to come in and work. 😂
@@squeekydinky That's one of the most Texan things I've ever heard.
@@whitneylosh-johnson2420 Right to Work means Get to Work lol
I was 14 and lived in Dallas when this happened. I was surprised at the number of people who had died/freezed in their homes. My brother and I slept in our parents' room to share body heat, but the bed was too cramped, so i slept on the ground under 4 covers. we also had an indoor kerosene heater that we had kept on for a couple hours at night before going to sleep (we kept most of the windows open when it was on). The indoor and outdoor pipes were also dripping at all times. Our 5 budgies and 3 dogs we had at the time were also kept as warm as possible and didn't freeze.
We even had 2 portable camping stoves that we used. My dad had lent one to our old neighbors and would check on them once a day.
Me and my brother also went to play in the snow till we literally started seeing red, lol
im glad the budgies survived, I have a cockatiel and he barely stays warm in 70 degrees so I would be terrified if it ever got that cold, but at least were prepared in the midwest. I can't believe how scary it must've been sleeping with that cold. Glad it was ok in the end.
@@bricksandtech7958 I was 12 around the time (16 now) but holy that was a crazy time I had to wrap my lizard in 2 blankets just to keep him warm, we also had a fireplace that ran on gas instead of electricity so thank goodness, we got power back I think the same day it went off, sadly some people in the area didn't get it back for over a week.
Barely a mention of how Texas is cut off from the rest of the countries grid. Meaning power cannot be rerouted from another state into Texas. There are 3 major power sectors in the US. Eastern, Western and Texas. Then they jack up prices when things like this happen. Case study of what deregulation can lead to.
And lead to "Cancun Cruz."
Without going back through the whole video to check, I feel like the grid being mostly self contained got mentioned three times. Maybe there should have been more focus on it as a dedicated point, but it wasn't quite barely mentioned.
The wholesale price for electricity fluctuates wildly, but most consumers are on fixed price plans. The people affected by the price spike were on plans that directly exposed them to the market rate. They were perfectly happy paying $0.03-0.05/kwh under normal conditions but when it spiked to $3-4/kwh they ended up with massive bills. The problem wasn't the spike in price, it was that consumers weren't properly informed of the risk and didn't set aside money in case of a massive surge.
This was a relatively small percentage of people, but the news blew it out of purportion. As far as the surge pricing goes, it was the consumer's decision to go with the plan they did, not the price being "jacked up. Prices fluctuate normally on all grids. I'd recommend doing research before making assumptions. Texas lawmakers do plenty of things you should be pissed about, this isn't one of them.
I'm sure that POS Cruz was nice and warm...along with Abbott.. As long as the money rolls in they could care less about the people of Texas.. Well at least the ones barely making it or poor people
Imagine still being salty he went to a warmer climate instead of climbing up the power poles and trying to fix it like I'm sure Nancy would have 😂
@@justinr9753 Cute cope, but there's hundreds of things that coward could have doing as the state's Senator. Organizing fundraising, tapping your billionaire benefactors' cash stacks, requesting federal aide, preparing contract packages for emergency repairs, etc. But nah, vacation with his wife who he lets people call ugly.
We had no power or water for 7 days. Thank God we have a fire place!! We had to break off branches from trees in our apartment parking lot for firewood. We used our bedroom closet as a "fridge" for our food and cooked outside on a little grill. We kept frozen stuff on the patio. Fortunately we had just gone grocery shopping a few days before and were stocked up on food and bottled water. At night we put the fire out but kept some embers burning, and we had to huddle together in the living room in our sleeping bags to stay warm. Covering the windows with blankets helped too. It was still only 40-45 degrees in there, even with the fireplace! It was scary! Luckily I grew up in the Midwest and knew what to do. A lot of people weren't so fortunate though. These apartments are so drafty and aren't built for that kind of freeze. So many people weren't prepared and had never even experienced that type of weather.
I had moved to texas temporarily to help take care of my elderly father in 2020.
I stupidly chose to live in a family owned RV as I didn't want to rent, being I didn't know how long i was going to be there.
I went through that winter of 2021 and then the late summer storm that hit in 2023 with 90 mph winds while living in that RV.
The late summer storm hit two weeks before my planned departure.
Let's just say I am glad to be back in my home state. No state has perfect weather, I know this, but I am okay with the weather where I have lived all my life.
It pissed me off to find the Ercot meeting had spoken of previous concerns of the upcoming 2021 winter storm, all of maybe 3 to 4 minutes.
It also pissed me off to see ppl in other states on social media scoffing at Texas for whining about the "cold weather".
My heart bleeds for the lost lives in 2021. 🙏
Come on man. You can't brag about the weather where you live and not say the state. If you say Wyoming I would be incredibly disappointed.
@@Praisethesunsonsame! I want to know where "home" is with the great weather!
I love my Wyoming weather... summers are comfortable and winter keeps the tourists from growing roots.
It wasn't even that bad, Texans are unprepared for Cold Weathers because they think their State is only HOT Weathers. 🔥🥵
🤣
This horrendous event seriously gave me PTSD... as a single mom with 2 little ones, living in SA with no family, it was the worst!! 😳 We had no water or electricity for DAYS!! I prayed every night that we wouldn't die alone frozen in our apartment. We all had to wear layers of sweaters and clothes with mittens and beanies to bed because the nights were unbearable. All the food in our fridge spoiled and the one in the pantry was gone...I couldn't get to my car to at least warm up because it was stuck in a garage and the garage was electrical... i tried manually opening it but was unsuccessful 😭 no one was around to help... my phone died because I couldn't charge it... my family was in another city 500 miles away and couldn't get to us to help because roads were closed due to icy roads.... it was the absolute worst event of our lives 😳😭 A few months later in July, I said peace out San Antonio, and left that city quick!!! I have never looked back or even visited it since then. Now whenever we have a storm in my hometown, I tend to freak out and start praying that we don't lose power....😭
Food spoiled? It was freezing outside.
@@JM-fo1te the same thing also happened to me. We lost good food since we recently got groceries
how was it that your garage was an electrical one with no door to the side? it has to be a manual though, else its frozen shut
@@JM-fo1te it lasted for months im pretty sure? there was also rolling blackouts
@@JM-fo1te Not all apartments have porches. We were on the third story with no way to store food outside because of this and the blackout lasted much, much longer than the food-safe outdoor temperatures did.
The poor 12 year old Conroe boy that died from the freeze went to my little sister’s school. Our house was 37 degrees when the power finally came back on. Other than hurricanes, this is probably the worst natural disaster that we’ve even been through. Glad to see that it’s been covered
37 degrees?!?! Jesus, your house was warm at least. 😂 How ERCOT got protection from being sued for their failures, when they are a private company, is staggering.
@@Erakius323 37° Fahrenheit, haha
@@MoniPolyyea it’s crazy because that freeway where everyone died and crashed, I passed on the rite side of that freeway . And my car was literally moving on its own . Good thing i didn’t get on that lane where that crash happened
@@MoniPoly Oh. Ok, that is pretty cold then. I was just picturing a room with like 3 propane heaters set up and roaring away. 😂 Glad you at least survived it.
My family and i had just moved here from California, we were caught by surprise as we were told that this never happens here… right !! Luckily the worse thing that happened was one frozen water line in our kitchen, we also had rolling blackouts… i pulled my fridge and placed a space heater on the wall from where the water line comes in and as soon as we had electricity i ran the heater! We only had 15 minutes but it was enough to heat the line and defrost the water line. No water pipes broke thanks to God, other than that and dealing with the rolling blackouts we made it ok., we had just purchased our home and it is a newer home so we got very lucky, it was a very challenging time for all of us but now, we are better prepared i feel, having been in our home almost 4 years i feel more confident and , i also know my home much better and how to deal with a lot of issues. It is very sad to hear about those who lost family.. my prayers for the family.
I remember this like it was yesterday. This entire week was crazy, people getting into accidents, people dying, the pile of cars on freeway. Then ERCOT going all monday night raw on us Texans when we got the electric bill. We were fortunate enough to have a well insulated home and blankets for days. We had 3 dogs at the time and they loved the snow and 2 of them weren't cold at all since they had thick coats. I was getting ready for my wedding at the time so my wife and I began planning our wedding since our schedules didn't allow us time together to plan it. We didn't have a generator or gas in our house so we had to deal with the rolling black outs. It was wild to see that El Paso was not affected by the storm at all, but all the news and press from our Governor didn't really help either. It was a huge blame game but I had no idea about the house bill being passed. This was a great piece of content, thank you.
Remember this November CANCUN CRUZ SAID F TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
are you under the impression that they generate and provide power? lol
@deeznoosh no I know that they controlled how much each provider would pay for electricity and this impacts the cost for the consumer regardless of the company you had. If they were connected to ERCOT, your bill would increase.
@@NumbuhWonDierecta lmfao are you under the impression that they set the electricity rate? lol
@deeznoosh i mean they manage the grid and facilitate the market. Without ERCOT, you need find another power source.
I still have PTSD from this ice storm. I live in an all electric house. The power was out for 6 days. It was 32 degrees in the house by day 3. You could see your breath inside the house. We have a pool and my daughter and I had to go out every few hours to break up the ice so the pool wouldn’t crack. I tried to use the propane heater on the pool and it blew up. I have since bought a very expensive generator and a propane fireplace. Every winter now I’m terrified that the power will go down again.
wtf is an “all electric house”
@@Galaxxymeeps I guess they mean they have no natural gas.
@@Galaxxymeepsmost houses in the world
Welcome to poor people’s winters in Britain (minus the pool). Can’t afford gas (if there is any) and certainly not electric heating. You learn very fast to live and sleep in one room, dress in layers, and use hot water bottles to stay warm. I have a coal fire and I don’t care what environmental laws they pass, they’ll take that fire from my cold, dead hands - sometimes it’s the only heat, light and cooking facilities we can afford.
Rather than buying yet more technology that you're reliant on for your survival, you'd have been better served to learn self-reliance. You all go into hysterics when the grid goes down because you're helpless as infants. Humans survived for 99.9999% of their history on earth without electricity, yet you hapless and helpless moderns consider yourselves superior to them.
Huh who would of thought a independent power grid where you cant import power was risky
I'm sure that's how many states view themselves and how they're organized. If they're sovereign states, then what happens elsewhere won't happen to them, right? But the opposite can happen and they get toasted. Similar to how many Americans talk about their own rights and autonomy, but when something bad happens to them, they're all about "you need to help me".
That's republicans for you
@@mattwolf7698 Human lives are worth less than a profit to them, that's blatantly obvious.
@@celticlass8573just look at Europe, they all attempted to wean themselves off of Russian gas
@@mattwolf7698the rep for Texas Ted Cruz went to Cancun Mexico 😂
I live in Monterrey, Mexico, a city 2 hours away from the border. This city is known for having temperatures of about 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, so I’ll never forget the 14th of February of 2021, it snowed like I have never seen in my life
Yeah that was a rough time. It started out so beautiful too, the first snowfall was magical and I finally understood why people love it so much. But it soon turned bleak after we lost power. Strangely, some places, like our apartments, were without power for days (aside from a precious few minutes every few hours), whereas other homes in our city never lost power.
Without power we were unable to cook, so we either had to eat things that required no cooking, or risk going out on the roads to pick up food from a restaurant that still had power. We tried making a fire in our fireplace to keep warm, but the effect was limited. Our insulation was just too poor and the fire was not hot enough. The apartment got down to at least the 50s so we just tried to bundle up with blankets as much as possible to sleep. Then one morning we woke up to a burst pipe, so after cleaning that up we were without water for a number of days, until maintenance could come and fix it. Until then we had to flush our toilets with buckets of pool water. Fortunately, there was little damage to our apartment, just a couple of sections of drywall that needed replacing.
All in all we got off relatively easy, but we found out just how underprepared we were. We've since stocked up on firestarter logs for our fireplace, and purchased a propane camp stove for cooking and heating water (in a ventilated area of course). We also take drip warnings during freezing temps much more seriously now - going from slow drips to thin streams, to make sure a pipe won't freeze again. I'm sure there's more that we could do, but even just those things would have helped a ton during that storm. I really hope Ercot is ready for the next one, but I have my doubts.
It is 2024 and Ercot has installed weathering on exactly one power plant. No prizes for guessing if that power is for rich people or poor people.
I was living in Austin at the time. Fortunately, the house I was in never lost power. We were served by a local electric cooperative. A lot of people within a few miles of us did not fare so well.
I have pictures of the snow and ice all over everything, and I'd love to share them, but UA-cam doesn't have that option.
Having lived through this, it is weird to see this documentary. My son actually sent me the link. I didn’t even know a documentary had been done. Here in Texas we called this “Snowmaggedon”. This storm went all the way into Mexico too. Usually North Texas or the Panhandle gets snow/ice, but not all the way to Brownsville at the southern tip. I was so glad our new home was so well insulated. Without any heat, our house stayed above freezing on the inside. We put towels under the doors and in the window sills even though we have double panned storm windows. Just so now warm air leaked out. We were so layered up in clothes, we were thankful we didn’t have any bathroom emergencies as you would not have been able to get all your layers off in time. 😬Luckily we could snuggle in bed with our dogs and cats and lots of extra blankets.
I was there. Ercot had the audacity to say that they weren't responsible for over 200 deaths, saying residents should have prepared for snow, which is bull because it just happened. Ercot was given immunity because of the billions of dollars they take by overcharging for electricity. 😮
I live in Roanoke TX and remember this event VERY well. We had no power for two days straight but we were definitely among the lucky few who were able to stay warm successfully. To this day, thats still the most snow I’ve ever seen in my life
Same bro
same here but in northern houston
Currently watching this during a blackout that’s been going on for a few days now after the hurricane that hit, my connection is cutting in and out as of right now but i was able to download this video to watch using youtube premium and this just feels so crazy to watch considering my situation. I remember when the freeze happened back in 2021 and to think we weren’t prepared for something like this again is crazy to me.
Hope you get power asap. Many people still don’t and I’m one of the lucky ones to have my power back on at 9pm on Monday (the day Beryl hit my area)
its so angering to live through this. i really hope you get power soon. praying for you and your family
Hope You're Doing Okay, I was In The Black Out Too, But Our Power Is Back, Hopefully None Of You Got Hurt.❤
The mistake you are Making is thinking preparing is a "we" problem. Texas individualism means looking after you and yours. Any group larger than that acting in the common good has to be a church. Otherwise it's communism and Texas banned communism last century.
Same my Power was out for 6 days because of beryl
I'm from the Dallas/Ft Worth area I had never experienced that kind of cold! My electricity was out for days! Thankfully my friend had power and told me to come over I'm so thankful for that because it was absolutely brutal!
Other states have warned Texas of not winterizing their power grid. Texas thinks its too expensive for something that never happens. Until it does happen and they still don't.
and they’ll still vote for the same people, lol. the ones who are visiting some other state or whole ass continent
This is what happens when you deruglate utility companies so much that your whole state refuses to join the western or eastern interconnect.
Ah yes. Let us put a completely necessary service in the hands of companies that answer to no one but shareholders. What could possibly go wrong?!
I hate that people died, but it takes that to remind people why those regulations were made and why we NEED to keep them. They were, and still are, written in blood.
That’s not how it works. Electricity companies are the “deregulated” portion of your comment, all they do is provide plans, rates etc. UTILITY companies actually manage the infrastructure. Retail Electricity Providers purchase power and sell it to consumers.
Utility companies are HIGHLY regulated.
@@ccormx You're kind of arguing semantics. Utility companies are what transfer power between the regional entities at their borders. Utility companies own the transmission lines and substations that bridge Texas RE/ERCOT and its neighboring regional entities. They are the ones that enable importing of power, and regulations can limit or force that capability to import power as well as export it. Utility companies are the ones that route and switch the power to meet demand. Texas RE barely has any ability to import or export power, by design, by choice. If Texas had a regulation in place to force Texas utility companies to have higher interconnect capacity with neighboring states or even the 2nd entity in Texas, less lives would have been lost. The lack of such a regulation is why Texas RE is by far the most unreliable regional entity, it can hardly be said that they are even part of NERC due to their embarrassing reliability and compliance.
@@ccormx the utility companies were so regulated that they didn’t bother to weatherproof their equipment. They didn’t bother to sign up their powerplants as critical gas users with the gas companies. So the gas companies sent gas to residential homes instead who couldn’t use it because they didn’t have any electricity.
During all of this, the electric rates shut up by 1000 times some utilities made their entire yearly income in just a few days. Meanwhile, Texans not only had to pay for that electric, but it didn’t stay so they had to repair their homes anyway. And they’ll be paying off those billions of dollars for decades.
Adding to that is the collective stubbornness and moronic distain of receiving the slightest help further serviced their already terrible infrastructure. It's a disaster waiting to happen considering the set playing field of Texas as a whole.
I live in Texas, i thought the freeze would never end since it lasted a whole week, the aftermath was just as bad with empty stores everywhere. I was one of the lucky ones to have power and hot water all week except for the last few days of the freeze power shut off for several hours it was because my apartment was on a priority node for my towns hospital.
I took ice cold showers. It was terrible
I belong to an Electric Coop in North Texas, and they were doing rolling blackouts, with a 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off rotation. It got down to the low 50s in my house, but it didn't freeze.
I was one of the lucky ones with power too. I also saw ice in places I never thought I'd see it
@@SlashinatorZsame, was across the street of a fire station. I was rather young so i didn't understand the magnitude of it since i was unaffected
it was only a week and it got this bad? That's wild, i'm so sorry- I genuinely thought it was like a month or something (from the uk, we haven't had a big freeze like this since I was a kid and I'm only 26)
We barely moved into our new home when it hit. I’m originally from the Northeast and even I wasn’t prepared.
We were fortunate that we weren’t part of ERCOT (we were part of a small rural co-op) but we still lost power for eight hours. By the end of the outage, my husband was checking the temp of the water to see if we needed to winterize (shut the water to the house, drain it, and add antifreeze to all the s-pipes and toilets). We were digging out our RV antifreeze when the lights came back on.
Not sure what we would have done if it were for more than a few days. A week is crazy! Some people probably still haven’t recovered, I bet.
We have SHECO. Never happier with them because we never lost power. It never even blinked.
Co-OP's are 100% the way to go.
@@queenb67 same here. Tri-County. Never even flickered a single time. However just 1/4 mile around us, all directions, power was out for many others. The city water froze, but our family was smart enough to fill 25 5 gallon buckets with water. My internet even stayed up the entire time. Co-OPs are nice.
@traybern I did have the water running slowly. It still froze up, but it fully froze up at the city side, water pumps froze and stopped working.
are you under the impression that they generate and provide power? lol
I actually experienced it. I was 9 years old, branches falling down everywhere, night temps about 10-15F, it barely got above freezing... Luckily, we had tons of food so we were fine, we just had to stay indoors for about a week
I lived in The Colony, Texas at the time of these events. Around 30 or so miles northeast from Fort Worth. I was left without power for 5 days and on February 13, 2021, I was taken to the emergency room for frostbite and hyperthermia. 3 years later and I'm okay now. This was one of the scariest moments I have had to go through in my life. Prayers for anyone who lost a family member or had one injured during these tragic events.
Most homes here are not built for the temperatures we got during that storm. Mine doesn't have a chimney, at one point it was 5° in my bedroom because the power had been out for almost 24 hours.
the second cold night i used my sleeping bag in bed and stayed warm all night unlike the first. Its a must have imo
Liar!!
@@asrr62 stop being toxic why are the other gen alfa kids are so toxic like gee he might actually had a hard time u dont know u could be hurting someone's feelings u dont know who he is if u dont know who he is why u being so mean to him
its ok at least ur ok
Contemporary homes are so thin they practically barely count as shelter. They may protect you from the rain or snow but whatever temperature it is outside is what it will become inside without powered heating or cooling.
@@asrr62🤡🤡🤡 It must be painful being that stupid.
As a Canadian, this is so shocking to me.. it was -60c (-76F) here for a week last year and we didn’t even blink, still drove around etc. but I understand an unprepared grid caused this mess.. just crazy…
It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd learned from the two previous times it happened. But big business only cares about profits...people be damned.
@@mockgothgurlUhg, the Corporate States of America 🙄 This is beyond ridiculous....
I mean we don't even have real winter clothes down here. I wore a jacket 3 times in the past year and it was just a sweatshirt type hoodie. We don't have the infrastructure or even the basic supplies for cold
@@ShinigamisBladeYou can layer your clothes. I moved to a much hotter climate recently. Negative temperatures are rare here. So didn’t bring much of my winter clothes with me. First winter I’m here it dropped to -10 (first time in 13 years) and kept dropping to it at night for two weeks (first time on record), yet I didn’t felt cold once. Also no burst pipes, no houses on fire, no pileups, electricity and water went out a dozen of times, though. I was told by locals about possible outages, everyone was expecting it. Every building has a tank and a pump for water. Main line is drained by utility company to prevent it from bursting if freeze hits and our outdoor plumbing has a drain valve - it opens then there’s no pressure in the main. The tank, the pump and piping for them are either inside or heated. About summers, for the first time in my entire life I’ve seen words “sizzling sun” in a forecast. First summer I’ve learned, the next I was prepared. It hit 41 degrees mark two days ago by the way…
So definitely have sympathy for the children, but everything else is on people being stupid or reckless, or both.
As a Canadian my mouth was hanging open. This is just another winter Tuesday here. It’s hard to imagine how it must have felt for people to have felt it for the first time. 47 years of winters isn’t enough experience sometimes let alone zero.
my mom had to go to the hospital for surgery the day of the freeze, at like 5 am. My brother and I were already sleeping in our parents’ room for warmth, and while she was safe in the hospital we’d call her all huddled up in her room, and she’d see our breath. We had to pull out our old heavy winter clothes and went over to our neighbors bc they had a working fireplace. it was crazy
Thankful the Kroger I worked for at the time was more prepared than the state. Took care of their employees and everyone else in the area the best they could during the power outages.
F in the chat for chico the chihuahua 12:28
F
Rip chico
Let's not forget the crazies who insisted that the snow wasn't snow at all...
lets not forget it? people dont actually think that, go touch grass.
@@HughWanztino They 100% did, and maybe still do.
@@HughWanztinopeople from my hometown unfortunately did. They’re all super far right and fckin crazy.
Aside from how bad the situation was, that sounds even worse! I can't take how stupid we're getting 😒😒😒
@@HughWanztino they did though, And i dont even live in the US it still caught in my twitter feed for some reason
Missouri resident for 30 plus years and was visiting my then gf at the time in ATX and had a feeling I couldn't shake that I needed to be there a day early. For me I've been through countless severe grid shut down level winters so it was shocking to see how unprepared a people and city could be.
What would have been another December day in MO was a catastrophe for atx.
Oddly enough her apartment side had heat and electricity while the other half had water.
I had none of my regular preps so we melted snow for drinking water, and took apartment complex pool water for toilet and sponge batheing water. Thankfully we had enough groceries but she was a anxious mess because of her newborn.
I survived Hurricane Katrina & Rita in Louisiana. As a United States Marine, I survived going thru boot camp at Paris Island during the summer! BUT This was by far the worst natural disaster I had to endure in my life!! Texas let us down.
CANCUN CRUZ SAID F*CK TEXAS I'M OUTTA HERE
I’ve been through Hurricanes here too. I never lost power in 2021. It was only below freezing 2 days. I never turned the heater on in my house. Thermostat read “55.” That’s perfect temps for me. Tshirt weather. Born and raised right here. We’ve had way worse ice storms than 2021. I was out jogging in that 15 deg weather in 2021. It was beautiful, then hot again a couple days later. I love that cold.
We froze in Louisiana too but for some reason people only care about Texas. We were out of power for 10 days with a broken generator, car wouldn't start, no cell service or internet. I realized if I needed help I would have to walk to find it.
I remember this like it was yesterday. I live in Irving Texas and my power was out for a week and a couple of days! It started February 15th, 2021, I will never forget. I'm single, live by myself in a 1 bedroom apartment. I remember sleeping in sweats and 2 coats wrapped in my blanket for over a week, it was freezing! I did not eat and drank bottled water. It was hard, but I made it through because my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was with me the whole time. I survived that whole thing. My whole apartments power was off, but my friend about 2 blocks away their power was on. ERCOT had different locations where they would have people to have power and some don't, they would regulate it back and forth, but my apartments never got it the whole time. I was so glad that it was over! And all the deaths i heard that came through that week. I thank my Heavenly Father that im alive! That was a crazy time.
I will always remember that date Feb 15 2021 we where trying to celebrate my little sister's birthday in the cold we light up fire to keep us warm and everyone covered with blankets trying to not worry so much about what was happening and just celebrate my sister's bday.
.
Amen. I was in Dallas and had just moved back here the week before. I lived in California, then moved here and the weather was very nice. Then this happened 😂
I was renting a crappy little apartment in Crowley TX at this time. Power went out for 19 hrs but thankfully that crappy little apartment had a fire place and I had a lot of firewood on stand by. Just me and my pit bull sitting beside each other covered up watching the fire and staying warm.
Wow
Growing up, lived in tiny but awful house with no real rooms. The windows were busted, the front door was broken, there was no back door as the back of the house was too rotten to support it.
My family and I slept in the front part of the shack we called a house. We were too broke to afford any sort of air conditioner or heater, but what we did have were living "heat packs" (dogs), and plenty of bricks and fire wood to make a furnace in the crappy shack. The only good thing about the house was the solid foundation, the floor heated up quick and stayed hot forever. Our dogs kept my tiny feet from getting frostbite every year.
This time though I am living in trailer house that has no drafts and I made it through the cold nights with just a couple blankets and 2 pairs of socks. Thankfully I wasn't still in that busted house when this storm came.
Ayoo!!! I remember the freeze. Me and my family set up a tent around the fireplace and camped out the worlds smallest apocalypse. I still got a cup of ice from the freeze, has a leaf in it. I call it “cryo leaf,” it’s actually still green to this day.