@rangerrebewWhen I heard about the coming weather, I knew Texas was in trouble.
I have lived in Texas all my life except for one year in a county west of St. Louis, MO. That is far enough north that utilities when built are prepared to withstand extreme cold weather for a long period of time. When winter came, cars, including our cars, had to put on snow tires. Water lines taking water to houses, did not break; power stayed on.
One time, I went to a shopping mall by myself, not a problem, right? Wrong. While I was in the mall, an ice storm came. I went to my car to find the entire windshield was covered with ice and the roads were the same - covered with ice. I would not have made it home if I had not had snow tires. I drove slowly just like the rest of the cars. That was the end of my driving alone there in winter.
My husband had a son who was a senior at a high school. At night, he had a job working on a computer floor for an insurance company - it was in St. Louis. He had snow tires on his car, but it slid off the road and crashed. That was before cars had seat belts. His head hit something and he had to go to a dentist due to losing some teeth.
Back to Texas: Texas is south, not north, not Missouri and north of there.
I prepared the house to get through days I knew we would be without power and water. Utilities here were not built to be prepared for 5 degrees or 0 degrees or -0 degrees for days, so power and water when away - it all froze due to those temps. for 4-5-6 days.
Now, it seems every group is being blamed for the outage of power and water. When everyone is finished blaming others, retrofit the lines of both power and water at their source so they do not freeze at such temperatures.
