‘Cold-stunned’ turtles rescued off Texas coast

AUSTIN: The brutal cold snap that has frozen Texas hasn’t only numbed unprepared people to the bone - thousands of turtles have been caught off-guard too.

Thousands of sea turtles unused to the plunge in temperatures have been washing up on the beaches of South Padre Island, off the southern coast of Texas. Volunteers have brought some 4,700 of them to a convention centre, where they are being kept in tubs and enclosures before they can be released when the water is warmer.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Texas are facing the fourth day without heat on Thursday after utilities made some progress restoring power and the winter storm that crippled the electrical grid moved out of the state.

Video shot by Ed Caum, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors

Bureau, shows volunteers carefully placing the animals on a trolley, and then the convention centre floor covered in turtles of all shapes and sizes.

Caum refers to the turtles as being “cold-stunned” - a condition where cold-blooded animals suddenly exhibit hypothermic reactions such as lethargy and an inability to move when the temperature in the environment around them drops. “We’ve brought them to the convention centre to get their core temperatures back up,” said Caum.

Power outages in Texas dropped below a half-million on Thursday morning for the first time in four days, but many people remained without electricity or safe drinking water after winter storms wreaked havoc on the state’s power grid and utilities.

Texas officials ordered 7 million people to boil tap water before drinking it, following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes.