The Texas Disaster Freezing Sacrifices At The Alter Of Wind And Solar Power
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 08:00
VIEWED: 11410
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Analysis reveals 194 died in Texas cold storm and blackouts, almost double the official count
by Zach Despart, Alejandro Serrano, Stephanie Lamm
Updated: April 1, 2021 2:45 p.m.
The deaths of nearly 200 people are linked to February’s cold snap and blackouts, a Houston Chronicle analysis reveals, making the natural disaster one of the worst in Texas this past century.
The tally, which is nearly double the state’s official count, comes from an investigation of reports from medical examiners, justices of the peace and Department of State Health Services, as well as lawsuits and news stories.
The state count, which is preliminary, has yet to incorporate some deaths already flagged by medical examiners as storm-related.
The 194 deaths identified by the Chronicle so far include at least 100 cases of hypothermia that killed people in their homes or while exposed to the elements, at least 16 carbon monoxide poisonings of residents who used dangerous methods for heat and at least 22 Texans who died when medical devices failed without power or who were unable to seek live-saving care because of the weather.
Sixteen deaths were from other causes, such as fires or vehicle wrecks, while the remaining 40 were attributed by authorities to the storm without listing a specific cause.
“This is almost double the death toll from Hurricane Harvey,” said State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas. “There was no live footage of flooded homes, or roofs being blown off, or tidal surges, but this was more deadly and devastating than anything we’ve experienced in modern state history.”
The toll is almost certain to grow in coming weeks as death investigators in the state’s most populous counties clear a backlog in cases from the cold snap. The Travis County medical examiner alone is investigating more than 80 deaths between Feb. 13 and Feb. 20.
Days-long blackouts are “unheard of” in developed countries, said José Aguilar, a U.S.-based utilities expert working to repair Venezuela’s power grid after mismanagement and underinvestment led to an electricity crisis two year ago. All grids have flaws, he said, but Texas leaders failed to heed warnings from past outages to make the state’s system more resilient.
Jason Enia, a disaster expert at Sam Houston State University, said political will for bold reforms fades quickly after a crisis. A blackout death toll that slowly ticks upward does not have the same galvanizing effect on the public psyche as the immediate devastation of a hurricane, he said.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210402011915/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/texas-cold-storm-200-died-analysis-winter-freeze-16070470.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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We merely ask our leaders for competence. We ask that your policies stop killing people.
By The Editorial Board of the Houston Chronicles
Texans long ago became accustomed to floods and droughts, wildfires and heat waves. Mass shootings, major plane crashes, tornadoes and random chemical explosions. They’ve all been mixed into the bitter cup from which we’ve sipped.
But it’s been generations — decade upon decade — since this state has seen anything like the death toll that February’s winter storm has wrought. Not since nearly 600 people died in the 1947 Texas City explosion have so many Texans been sent so suddenly to their graves — more than in Hurricanes Harvey and Ike combined. More than Tropical Storm Allison, which killed 55 Texans in 2001. More than in the 1953 Waco tornadoes, which exceeded 100 deaths. More than the 137 who died in the 1985 crash of Delta Airlines Flight 135 at the Dallas airport. More than the 15 who died in the chemical plant explosion that devastated the tiny town of West.
Those few days this past February, when the mercury plummeted and our energy sources quickly followed suit, and men, women and children died in their beds, will go down in history not just as one of Texas’ deadliest disasters, taking nearly 200 lives by latest counting, but also as a sort of reckoning for this state of neglect that passes for government.
In the same way that the pandemic’s grim toll on Texas — nearly 50,000 lives lost statewide — exposed holes in our public health system, the storm shined a light on Texas’ broken governance. Our elected leaders, with their shortsighted policies on everything from electric deregulation to air quality to caring for foster children, the mentally ill and the uninsured, leave us in a state perpetually teetering on the brink of crisis. They’re hedging their bets with our lives, in the name of conservative principle.
What is conservative about saving us a few dollars on taxes and electricity bills if some of us end up paying with our lives? What is fiscally responsible about a system of energy generation that allows industry to profit from crisis while millions of Texas households and businesses are stuck with the bills: lost pay, lost revenue, exorbitant electric bills?
We’d like to say that the winter storm that led to February’s historic blackout represented a long-awaited winter for Texas leaders’ recklessness. We’d like to believe that legislative efforts in Austin to respond to the storm represent some kind of awakening, a Texas Spring, if you will, of responsible policymaking.
But a few seeds of goodwill and promises of reform do not a revolution make.
And yes, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, we agree with you that Texas needs to “revolutionize” the system that fuels the power grid and supplies energy to our homes. But we need a broader revolution in the way our elected officials view their jobs. We’re not asking for far-left fantasies of compassion and equity — not today, anyway.
For the purposes of this moment, this editorial, we’ll define our revolutionary demands in the humblest of terms.
Competence. We merely ask for competence. We ask that your policies stop killing people — whether they be mentally ill patients trapped on waiting lists for scarce hospital beds or vulnerable Texans whose medical devices need a reliable power grid to keep them alive.
The number of Texans who died now stands at 194, close to twice the official tally. The larger total was determined by a troop of Houston Chronicle journalists, who dug through news accounts, death records and coroner’s reports.
Of the nearly 200 dead, at least 100 died of hypothermia. Yes, in the year 2021, they died of the cold, and often in their own homes shuddering to death while Texas’ much-hyped independent power grid came within “minutes or seconds” of absolute, weeks-long collapse. Sadly, the number is not complete. The Austin medical examiner’s office is investigating another 80 deaths the week of the storm, and other inquiries continue across the Lone Star State.
But as it stands th
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Since the February power outages, Texas legislators have been busy weighing a host of improvements for the state’s grid, from weatherizing equipment to shaking up oversight to partnering with the billionaire investor Warren Buffett on new emergency-use power plants.
But hardly any of them have focused on what some believe could be a more widespread fix: plugging into other U.S. power supplies.
While Texas has long opposed opening its grid to avoid federal oversight, and ostensibly to keep prices low, energy experts say the calculus is not what it once was and that the benefits of connecting to the outside world are at least worth examining, especially as renewable energy is poised for a major expansion under the Biden administration.
Not only is the state missing out on a potential lifeline in future blackouts, they warn, it also risks passing up billions of dollars in new investments for clean, marketable electricity.
“We export every form of energy you could imagine except electrons,” Michael Webber, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told reporters recently. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Let’s at least study the option.”
Though a more integrated grid would probably not have prevented outages in February— surrounding states were also struggling to meet demand — it could have helped shorten them substantially, according to Dan Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.
The blackouts left 4.5 million Texans without power and water for days and contributed to at least 197 deaths.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/An-open-Texas-
power-grid-would-boost-reliability-16090160.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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That's how they get you.
Free shit offered up front that your grandkid's will be paying for.
Hopefully Puerto Rico knows that too and declines our "generous" offer for statehood whenever that comes up. They'll have Disneyland San Juan in the first decade and their entire history and culture will be destroyed.
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Imagine the hypocrisy of a government who will allow businesses to card people to get a job or buy groceries, but won't card people to vote in elections and gives millions of non-citizens free money from taxpayers.
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Quote:I checked and discovered that Congress does NOT have to ask Puerto Ricans for their permission before making the island a state. However, Congress has often followed a more complicated process. For many admitted states, Congress first passed an Enabling Act, which authorized the population of a territory to convene a constitutional convention to draft a constitution for the new proposed state, and to apply for admission to Congress. Often in the Enabling Act, Congress specified a range of conditions that the proposed state had to meet in order for admission to occur. These conditions varied widely across time and states. For example, some states were precluded from allowing polygamy or slavery, and some states were forced to practice religious toleration or to afford civil jury trial rights. Once the proposed state constitution was drafted, it was sent to Congress, which then decided whether to pass an additional act or resolution admitting the state. One variation in the Enabling Act process involved Congress delegating the final approval process to the President.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's how they get you.
Free shit offered up front that your grandkid's will be paying for.
Hopefully Puerto Rico knows that too and declines our "generous" offer for statehood whenever that comes up. They'll have Disneyland San Juan in the first decade and their entire history and culture will be destroyed.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation
/article-iv/clauses/46
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Looks like Libtards are still pushing for more Windmills, Solar Panels, Electric cars - all of which did not function when they were needed.
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Quote:Baytown, Texas, gets its power from NRG Cedar Bayou Power Plant on the edge of town. During the blackout, the plant wasn't running because it wasn't receiving any natural gas. That was because the power had been foolishly shut off to the natural gas pipeline compressors in order to conserve electricity. Big, dumb mistake. It was really that simple and stupid, but the politicians wanted to mislead the public about the real cause of the blackout.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Looks like Libtards are still pushing for more Windmills, Solar Panels, Electric cars - all of which did not function when they were needed.
Map to NRG Cedar Bayou Power Plant: https://goo.gl/maps/PgdYzUrnvqyJsA696
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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$16 Billion "Pricing Error" - Ha, Ha, Ha, Suckers Who Will Be Forced To Pay says the GOP!
Highly-criticized decision to leave electricity prices at $9,000 per megawatt hour for 32 hours after the outages stopped — 300 times higher than pre-storm prices — led to what an independent market monitor described as a $16 billion “pricing error”.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dispatched a top aide to the ERCOT operations center on the night the grid operator made the controversial decision to leave electricity prices at maximum levels — a move blamed for creating a multi-billion dollar mess.
Abbott has squarely placed the blame for the blackout boondoggle on ERCOT, which operates the power grid, and called for its CEO to resign right after the lights started coming back on across Texas on Thursday, Feb. 18. The ERCOT board eventually fired its CEO.
Unmentioned while Abbott was distancing himself from the power outage fiasco and railing against ERCOT on TV: a top energy policy adviser, Ryland Ramos, spent the previous night — and into early Thursday morning — at the agency’s operations center in Taylor, outside of Austin. That’s where ERCOT’s high-tech control room, handling the flow of power to most Texans, is located.
Also on hand at the previously undisclosed meeting were Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker, an Abbott appointee who later resigned under bipartisan pressure, along with representatives of four of the major electric transmission and distribution companies in Texas.
Ramos returned to the operations center Friday morning, February 19 — right after the price cap was lifted — and stayed there most of the day, according to ERCOT visitor logs obtained by Hearst Newspapers.
Abbott spokesman Mark Miner said neither the governor nor Ramos “were involved in any way” in the decision to keep prices at the maximum, which contributed to bankruptcies and billions in losses that will reverberate in the Texas economy for years to come. He said Abbott wanted Ramos at the operations center because he felt ERCOT was spewing “disinformation” about the crisis. (Actually it was the governor spewing disinformation but he won't admit to it because there was $16 billion changing hands. The governor does not wish that money be returned to its rightful owners. Fearing being sued, the Houston Chronicle won't call the governor a clever crook, yet he is.)
Ramos was “in the room relaying information in real time,” Miner said. “These individuals were working the phones and scrambling to get power back on and keep it on.”
The visitor logs show that Ramos and Walker, along with top regulatory officials from Centerpoint Energy, Oncor, AEP and Texas-New Mexico Power Company — signed in at about 10 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17, and stayed there until 8:49 a.m. the next day. Cots were made available for those who needed to rest as the night wore on, officials said.
The timeline in the visitor logs means the Abbott aide was on the scene when ERCOT decided — just before midnight Wednesday — to quit ordering rolling power outages and then, in the wee hours of Thursday, to leave the maximum prices for electricity in place.
Centerpoint declined comment and referred questions to ERCOT. ONCOR, the state’s largest transmission and distribution company, sent Liz Jones, vice-president of regulatory affairs, to the operations center that night to help officials navigate the grid challenges and manage impacts in ONCOR’s service territory, said spokeswoman Kerri Dunn. AEP and Texas-New Mexico Power Company confirmed they sent representatives to attend the meeting.
Patrick Woodson, CEO of an electric retail provider that is going out of business after getting more than $65 million in bills it couldn’t pay due to the government-ordered price hikes, said the public deserves answers about how and why electricity prices stayed so high for so long — and who all took part in the decision making.
“There’s absolutely no justification whatsoever for prices to have been artificially inflated after the emergency
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Quote:
$16 Billion "Pricing Error" - Ha, Ha, Ha, Suckers Who Will Be Forced To Pay says the GOP!
Not seeing how that story has anything to do with the GOP.
They're not getting away with that. You can steal a cookie from the jar here and there, but they took all the cookies.
And aside from that, they used a Democrat Party tactic of trying to change people's behavior by making it too expensive to do what they normally would do. The middle of that catastrophe is not the time to be fucking around like that.
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Imagine the hypocrisy of a government who will allow businesses to card people to get a job or buy groceries, but won't card people to vote in elections and gives millions of non-citizens free money from taxpayers.
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Quote:No, it is NOT a Democratic strategy. I was there when the Republicans set up this electric system 20 years ago and all Democrats were opposed because it was obvious what would eventually happen during an emergency.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
$16 Billion "Pricing Error" - Ha, Ha, Ha, Suckers Who Will Be Forced To Pay says the GOP!
Not seeing how that story has anything to do with the GOP.
They're not getting away with that. You can steal a cookie from the jar here and there, but they took all the cookies.
And aside from that, they used a Democrat Party tactic of trying to change people's behavior by making it too expensive to do what they normally would do. The middle of that catastrophe is not the time to be fucking around like that.
All the main characters in the news story are Republicans who will receive part of the $16B in loot. All the Republicans deny there was looting and refuse to cooperate in investigating the looting. Hey, it was only $16 billion and the looting was perfectly legal, but voters won't see it that way if they understood the details of this scam and how natural gas industry and the electric generating industry interact. It would take a book to describe what is happening and the voters won't read it, anyway. Because of that the Republicans will get away with the money.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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